Five Nights At Freddy's

Review

I’ll say it, the FNAF movie delivered, ...somewhat. Was it the best piece of cinematic history ever, no, but did it have killer animatronics, Matthew Lillard, and a springlock scene??? ABSOLUTELY. I don't necessarily think people are going too hard on this film but it’s fine, nostalgia and Matthew Lillard definitely color my feelings towards it but I wouldn’t put it any lower than mid without those biases. I cared more about the actual FNAF stuff than Mike’s personal life so those portions I was less engaged but overall it was a fun time.

I could try to rundown what FNAF is about but then we’d be here for weeks so I’ll just talk about some of the continuity changes they made for the movie and how I feel about them. Mike being Mike Shmidt from the first game but NOT Mike Afton was interesting. Micheal Afton is probably the second most important character in the series after William Afton so this was definitely an intentional bait and switch but I don’t know if I liked the character of Mike Shmidt enough to be cool with the changes.

Crying Child being kidnapped instead of the bite of ‘83 victim was a choice. Honestly I think you could have kept that lore bit and you could make that why Mike is so determined to take care of his sister to prove he’s a good older brother, also would give him good reason to be more scared and paranoid when it comes to Freddy’s because for the whole movie he was basically chilling at Freddy’s. Also William Afton recognizes Mike’s name, presumably that happened 10-15 years ago and he kidnapped and killed a lot of people so how did he remember this random kid that didn’t even possess an animatronic and also put together that this guy was that kid’s brother from the most basic last name alone. ALSO ALSO, what happened to Mike’s brother?? Just died for nothing?? Didn’t even get like a cool golden freddy reveal? Like yea maybe he's the puppet but it really makes Garrett feel irrevlevant in this movie despite us spending so much time on his story which is a little frustrating.

I like the change of William Afton still being alive this far out from the MCI, obviously I love Matthew Lillard but also this movie wouldn’t have been complete without a springlock scene so I’m glad they kept him around.

Vanessa being William’s daughter was fine. I honestly don’t know much about Vanessa and the most recently lore since Security Breach but as far as I was concerned this didn’t impact me very much. But what did impact my happiness was the fact that William stabbed her. Now this is going to sound like I’m a William Afton apologist but bear with me for a second. In my preferred version of the story of the games, William does all that child murder because he wants his own children to come back to life, does that excuse him? no, but was it does do is make him a more complex character, he feels responsible for their deaths so he’s doing all that he can to bring them back, this is what makes his conflict with Mike so good because Mike also feels somewhat responsible and he wants to stop his father and end the suffering of his siblings, anyways long rant to say that: Game William Afton would NEVER put his kid in a coma and also this just means that Movie William is a child murderer for the fun of it I guess, so I didn’t love that, and if she wasn’t his daughter half of this problem wouldn’t exist. I just think the interpretation of the games where William is doing everything for his kids is so much more interesting, especially when it comes to his conflict with Michael when you compare it to the idea that he was just always that way.

This random kid as Golden Freddy be the spokesperson for the gang was fine, I think a Garrett Golden Freddy reveal would have been really cool though and they could have had the kids speak through hallucinations or dreams of the Golden Freddy animatronic, only to reveal its Garrett at the end. Then we could have more ‘it’s me’ and the animatronics could break from their hold without the stupid pictures, like Golden Freddy could remember and once he connects with Mike he could free them from William’s hold, the tidbit that the kids bodies are in the animatronics is never shown or elaborated on, so you could have Mike look in the back at the end of the movie and find an airplane in the golden freddy suit, like you wouldn’t even actually have to show the body just the plane. Personally, I think Garrett Golden Freddy was the way to go for this movie and they dropped the ball.

I think that’s all the highlights in terms of lore changes, wow that was basically a review in it of itself. The story was mid, like I said, I cared a lot more about the actual FNAF stuff and less about Mike’s angsty-ness, I think bite of ‘83 Garrett Golden Freddy would actually fix a lot of my problems with the story. I didn’t like how disconnected Mike’s stuff was from Freddy’s, like sure Garrett was a William victim but like he didn’t even get kidnapped at Freddy’s so it feels barely relevant for most of the movie until the ‘reveal’ at the end. I didn’t like how relaxed the atmosphere of Freddy’s was for most of the movie, like Mike is literally taking naps on the job and making pillow forts with the animatronics, like come on. With my theoretical bite of ‘83 Garrett Golden Freddy, the movie could be scary all the way through with the animatronics hunting down Mike each night but he keeps coming back because he’s convinced that he saw/heard his brother and is still coming to terms with his involvement with Garrett’s death while still trying to provide for his sister. Imagine he’s almost convinced to give his sister up to his Aunt because he thinks he’s going crazy imagining his brother’s voice/image but he can’t bear to lose another sibling and still he can’t give up on the possibility of Garrett.

Bite of '83 Garrett Golden Freddy would also explain the connection that Abby has to the MCI kids because that was another issue I had with the movie, she was seeing them before Mike started working at Freddy’s, why? If one of them was her brother it would make sense why the MCI kids might try to reach out to her, it might make sense why she’s seeing visions of Garrett’s last moments, and why the animatronics are so attached to her.

I also honestly have no clue why Vanessa was in this movie other than to just info-dump about FNAF like there have to be better writing devices than ‘random girl appears and tells all, oh and she’s the murderers daughter’ like not to toot my own horn but going back to bite of ‘83 Garrett Golden Freddy, we could have Golden Freddy leave those messages on the walls of the building or something, Golden Freddy trying to help Mike save him like he canonically does.

The animatronics looked great in this film, especially considering they were practical puppets first and foremost and actors in suits later. They weren't super scary looking but I think the atmosphere of this movie could have made up for it if they were really trying to go for a scary movie. This movie wasn't scary and I consider that to be a flaw. A lot of people cite where the series is now as reason to say, 'well why did you think it was going to be scary?' and I raise you, because it was advertised as a scary movie and it didn't deliver on it's advertising. Also this movie is based on the first 3 games mostly and, those games are scary so it's not shocking that people expected and wanted a scary movie since this wasn't 'Security Breach: The Movie'. I already explained earlier how Bite of '83 Garrett Golden Freddy could have fixed this but that's all I'll say about that.

The really big standout of this movie for me was definitely the springlock scene, it was definitely very neutered compared to what it could have been but I think it was done well, I could have done with more agonized screaming but the image of his convulsing body being carried off the by the animatronics and the shot of the ghost closing the door on his dying body made up for it I think. This movie was so lack-luster to go so hard at the end.

Overall, I’m a FNAF fan so I’ll never be satisfied story-wise with anything less than Henry’s final speech in Pizzeria Simulator and Scare-wise anything less than ‘The Corn Maze’ in Help Wanted’s Halloween DLC really isn’t that scary but hey this movie was scarier than Security Breach so there’s that. Will I watch this again? Factually yea, because I’m watching it with my mom in two days and if my friends want to watch it I’ll say yes to them too, but like in my leisure time?? Probably not, I might just record Matthew Lillard’s scenes and keep those, but otherwise I’d rather just watch Mark’s videos top down, the Game Theory videos top down, then GTLive top down, and then finish it off with a 9 hour lore recap video, they’d probably hold my attention for longer.