Can video game movies ever be considered high art? Granted, that’s a question likely few will think of while watching the new Five Nights at Freddy’s movie, adapted from the wildly popular video game franchise of the same name. Still, for the Freddy’s-agnostics among us, it was curiously the main question that nagged this critic’s jump scare-addled brain for all 109 minutes of its incessantly loud yet weirdly incident-free runtime. It’s not fair to decry this adaptation for relying on jump scares over actual tension or plot – the original game operates on a basic mechanic of “click… click… AHHHH” – but there’s something curiously insubstantial about watching a movie so transparently reverse-engineered from business decision to actual product that you mostly sit there wondering, “Wow, they’re really trying to make this into an actual movie.” And you kind of wish they wouldn’t.
Blumhouse’s latest modestly budgeted cash grab went through several hands before arriving at the lap of director and co-writer Emma Tammi. Warner Bros. originally acquired the film rights for the franchise in 2015, with the movie set to be directed by Monster House-helmer Gil Kenan. After entering development hell, the rights were turned over to Blumhouse Pictures, with Chris Columbus taking over directing duties in 2018. By 2021, Columbus, too, had departed the project. This in mind, the cinematic version of Freddy’s that arrives simultaneously in theaters and on Peacock this week has gone through three separate screenplays, feeling about as frustratingly anonymous as that amount of creative turnovers would suggest. There’s only so many times you can roll out a clump of pizza dough before it starts to get overworked, or whatever pizza-related metaphor you’d like to use for this occasion (Freddy Fazebear’s used to be a pizza joint, right?) Consider it a modestly pleasant surprise, then, that Five Night’s at Freddy’s isn’t all that bad. It’s not all that good either, but it’s about as entertaining as something like this could be, given its prolonged mess of a production.
Taking narrative cues from the series’ lore-heavy third installment, Freddy’s follows Mike Schmidt (Josh Hutcherson), a down-on-his-luck security guard caring for his little sister, Abby (Piper Rubio), who takes a last-minute gig at Freddy Fazebear’s Pizza, a once-popular but since-abandoned family entertainment center. Fazebear’s is essentially scary Chuck E. Cheese or ShowBiz Pizza Place, in case you didn’t already find those places scary enough. Initially hesitant to take the nighttime security job, Schmidt must relent when his malicious Aunt Jane (Mary Stuart Masterson) threatens to take him to court over custody of Abby. Monitoring the derelict yet still functional building, Mike is increasingly haunted by vivid dreams that provide hints to a tragedy from his past: his younger brother, Garrett (Lucas Grant) was kidnapped when they were both children, and the identity of his killer may be buried somewhere amidst these repeated visions. There’s also some killer animatronics on the loose, and a local police officer named Vanessa (Elizabeth Lail), who may know more about all of this than she’s letting on.
It’s entirely too much plot for a premise this thin, even if there’s something admirable in the attempt to flesh out “killer robots that jump at you” into a feature film. Still, by fusing ’80s camp horror aesthetics with the creepy yet sentimental unease of works like 2021’s The Black Phone, Tammi and co-writers Seth Cuddeback and Scott Cawthon have created a surprisingly curious mixture. This is not a film that takes itself too seriously, but it nevertheless attempts to make you care where a slightly lesser project would’ve shut up and played the hits. For his part, Hutcherson is decent as the beleaguered yet ultimately heroic protagonist. There’s also an entertaining, if small, appearance from the always watchable Matthew Lillard, who should be playing a larger role should this movie receive its planned two sequels. Not all the performances are good, though. As with most child performances, Rubio is inconsistent. Lail attempts to find some grounding with the character of suspiciously kind officer Vanessa, but her role is so bafflingly written that it becomes unintentionally funny. Unintentional hilarity is a theme throughout Freddy’s, a movie that occasionally seems to be in on the joke, but also delivers some truly inexplicable moments of dialogue. “I’m having trouble processing… what just happened,” Schmidt solemnly delivers towards film’s end. No kidding, dude, you just got chased down by possessed killer robots at an abandoned pizza restaurant.
Where the movie truly excels is in design and craft. Even as the plot begins to malfunction, the immaculate puppets and animatronics, designed by the Jim Henson Company, never do. The practical execution of the story’s main antagonists makes for some very tangible thrills and the robots look great amidst the dramatic neon lighting and creative production design by Marc Fisichella. The sound design, while sporadically obnoxious, accentuates the eerie clicks and whirs of these metallic mascots in a way that compliments their bulky design. If only we could appreciate the carnage these guys can unleash, devastatingly yet predictably neutered by a PG-13 rating. The jury is out on whether this movie will be as popular as the games that preceded it. It feels slight, but most video game movies do. In the end, they’re all attempting to adapt something that was fundamentally designed for another medium, so the result will always have a gimmicky quality that feels inescapably small. You can dress it up all you like, but it’s still Chuck E. Cheese.
Photo courtesy of Universal Pictures
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