If you’ve been on the internet since the early 2010’s, you’ve probably heard of the popular horror series Five Nights at Freddy’s. Created by Scott Cawthon, the series began as a survival horror game set in 1993 where you play as Mike Schmidt, the nightly security guard of the popular restaurant, Freddy Fazbear’s Pizza. Over the duration of five nights, you must survive from midnight to 6:00 a.m. all while being hunted down by the pizzeria’s animatronics that will end your game by jump-scaring you and stuffing Mike Schmidt into a spare animatronic suit, killing him. But over the years, the series has grown into an incredible story of a broken family trying to piece itself back together with what little resources they have left.
The Five Nights at Freddy’s series has thirteen games and over thirty books, with well over a thousand characters that have been created to take part in the series. And now, the well-known horror franchise has its own movie.
With a total run time of 1 hour and 50 minutes, the movie follows a similar plot to the first game as well as the book series, where Mike Schmidt brings his younger sister Abby to his new job — guarding Freddy Fazbear’s Pizza overnight. During his shift, Mike meets local police officer, Vanessa Monroe, who helps him and Abby with their adventure to try and discover what really happened to Mike and Abby’s brother, Garrett, after he went missing when Mike was a child.
Since Five Nights at Freddy’s has become such a popular game series, popular content creators have done several videos and live streams playing the games. Some of the most popular creators actually got cameos in the movie, such as CoryxKenshin and MatPat from Game Theory. Fans were pleasantly surprised with these fun cameos, but many were upset that one of the most popular gaming YouTubers and self-proclaimed “King of Five Nights at Freddy’s,” Markiplier, didn’t make an appearance, as he has made almost 250 videos on the game series. Mark explained that he couldn’t appear in the film due to a scheduling conflict with his own movie, Iron Lung. Thankfully, Mark not making a cameo didn’t dwindle the movie’s ratings too much.
The movie’s plot accurately follows the story of the games and novels and makes a great addition to the Five Nights at Freddy’s franchise. It features a lovable cast, with some very well-known actors such as Josh Hutcherson, famous for his role as Peeta in The Hunger Games (and the Whistle edits that have been haunting my sleep), Matthew Lillard, who was previously known for playing Shaggy in the 2002 Scooby-Doo movie, and Elizabeth Lail, known for her role as Anna in the fantasy TV series Once Upon A Time.
I also thought the actors who played the spirits of the dead kids were really good. They were cute, but also eerie, something I personally think it’s a difficult combination for child characters to be. But the actors did an incredible job, so props to them.
A Whitman junior explains that they “really enjoyed watching the movie” as it “was just really well put together” and “actually represented what Five Nights at Freddy’s: the game actually is like.” They said that they would “100% watch it again in [their] free time and highly recommend it to others.”
Keen, a Whitman student, happily exclaims that the movie was “phenomenal” and “genuinely a good movie.” She also mentioned how “people complained about some parts but overall, it was great” as some critics have given the movie low ratings through Rotten Tomatoes.
Another sophomore, who describes themself as a “very long time FNAF fan,” recalls how they were “incredibly hyped for the movie” before it came out. The student rated the film as an “8.5/10,” but described how they thought it was “really not that good…for a horror movie” or for “people that haven’t been long time FNAF fans.” They explained how “the plot is a bit of a mess, but there’s plenty of references and cameos that the average FNAF fan would enjoy.” The sophomore wrapped up their review by mentioning how “it’s not very scary, but still enjoyable nonetheless.”
