Posted in: Blumhouse, Movies, Review, Universal | Tagged: blumhouse, five nights at freddy's, josh hutcherson, universal

Five Nights At Freddy's Is Fun For Newbies & Fans {Review}

Five Nights At Freddys is pretty damn fun and entertaining for both fans and newbies alike, and better than most are expecting.

Five Nights At Freddy's has been in development for quite a long time, and Blumhouse swore they would not release the film until they nailed it for the fans. They seemed to have nailed it, adapting the mega-popular video game franchise that longtime fans should have a ball with and newcomers can access without a lick of knowledge about the lore. While far from perfect, the scares work, the cast is pretty good, and the animatronics are some of the best practical effects in a long time. Blumhouse has themselves another franchise for sure.

Five Nights At Freddy's Impresses, If You Can Believe It

Going into this film blind and knowing nothing of the series' lore, the story unfolds in the most obvious ways imaginable. Mike (Josh Hutcherson) is having trouble holding down a job to keep custody of his younger sister, given a job as security/caretaker of a rundown 80's kids' restaurant, Freddy Fazbear's Pizzeria. Think Chuck E. Cheese, in case you didn't gather that from the picture above. While working, he discovers that the animatronics are alive and they are not just looking to play.

The plot of Five Nights At Freddy's is pretty simple and contains no surprises for anyone who has watched a horror film before, but that works to its advantage. Everyone involved here knows the score and acts accordingly. This works best when it leans fully into the ridiculousness of watching giant animatronic creatures killing people and interacting with our world. There is a lot here for fans to appreciate and reward them for championing this franchise for years. At the same time, the straightforward narrative works well for newbies who don't know a Fazbear from a Bonnie.

And the humans take a back seat to the amazing animatronics created for the film by Jim Henson's Creature Shop. They are a marvel to look at and instantly win you over from the second you see them on screen. Forgetting their terrible and disturbing origin, we learn in the film they really give the film a look that many feared they would not be able to accomplish when the adaptation was announced way back in 2015. The actors also seemed to benefit from touching and feeling the creatures on set instead of just acting at a tennis ball on a stick if they were full CGI. The same can be said of the set design of Freddy Fazbear's Pizza as well. Every inch of that place feels like a love letter to fans.

There are not a lot of said human actors in the film, as the main cast is really just four people. Hutcherson is as good as Mike, a ball of quiet rage that life chewed up and spit out. He has heart, though, and it leaks out the most in his scenes with his sister Abby, played by Piper Rubio. They have a good rapport, and since the whole film hinges on that relationship, that was a relief. Matthew Lillard makes the most of his time as well. Not as strong as Elizabeth Lail as cop Vanessa. Some of that has to do with the script from director Emma Tammi, game creator Scott Cawthon, and Seth Cuddeback. They have to preserve the reveals for the end, and she suffers the most from not being able to flesh out her character because of it.

The whole thing also works because it can expand on the narrative of the game and beyond the confines of it. The world of the film feels bigger than the games could have ever dreamed of. This is PG-13 so that Blumhouse can clean up at the box office, so the gore is non-existent, with jumpscares being the way of things. And way more jokes than many are expecting; there were also a couple of big laughs in there. One wonders if an R-rated cut is waiting to be released in about a month.

Besides being a completely obvious story containing zero surprises, Five Nights At Freddy's is a perfect gateway horror film for the younger crowd that will pack the theater this weekend and stream multiple times on Peacock. Older viewers may find the central story pretty disturbing and wonder if letting their kids get into the franchise was ever a good idea, but that is another discussion. The genie is out of the bottle there, and fans will be digging this film for a long time.

Five Nights At Freddy's

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Review by Jeremy Konrad

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8/10

Though Five Nights At Freddy's has a simple story that will not shock or surprise even newbies to the franchise, it maximizes that simplicity to be very entertaining and fun. Fans should be happy, their long wait was worth it.

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