Freddy Fazbear's Pizza has an opening for a security guard. You interested? Well, it turns out that this kid’s entertainment location ALWAYS has an opening for a security guard. Why? The poor suckers keep getting killed in violent and nasty ways. Enter at your own risk because something shady is going on here.
Five Nights At Freddy’s has had gamers’ collective attention for years now. A movie version of the horror game is long overdue, but - thanks to the partnership of Universal and Blumhouse - Five Nights At Freddy’s finally arrives in theaters and on Peacock to mixed results. While violent in plenty of ways, the story itself - concerning the grief over a missing child and one man’s attempt to make it square up with his family after all these years - is a bit more padded than it ought to be for a horror game adaptation.
Just get to the murdering robots already!
Part of the problem with the movie is that it lands in the wake of 2021’s Willy’s Wonderland which, as far as the tone goes, is more in tune with my sensibilities when it comes to killer animatronics. While both the video game and Willy’s Wonderland came into existence around the same time, far more people have been exposed to Five Nights At Freddy’s . . . which is why a film adaptation makes so much sense.
Directed by Emma Tammi, who co-wrote the adaptation with video game series creator Scott Cawthon and Scott Cuddeback, Five Nights At Freddy’s opens with a SAW-like torture scene - which is pretty interesting given its family-friendly vibe - as a security guard is caught, tortured, and then killed by one of the animatronic killers.
From this opening, we shift into another tortured story as security guard Mike (Josh Hutcherson), struggling to do the right thing for his much younger sister, Abby (Piper Rubio), and agrees to take yet another security guard position: this time at Freddy Fazbear’s Pizza. It’s that or lose custody of her. 
But I guess he doesn’t watch the nightly news because Freddy Fazbear’s has been closed since the 1980s when a bunch of kids went missing. Funny thing is, Mike’s own brother went missing, too. Could there be a connection to these missing kids and the violent ghosts inhabiting the creatures - Freddy (Kevin Foster), Bonnie (Jade Kindar-Martin), Chica (Jess Weiss), Cupcake, and Foxy. which come alive at night?
Co-starring Mary Stuart Masterson, Matthew Lillard, and Elizabeth Lail, as a mysterious, but helpful cop, Five Nights At Freddy’s is just a genuinely weird film in which all the parts don’t quite fit together. The horror is definitely there, but the story is so padded that it takes away from the atmosphere that Tammi has created. It also clocks in at close to 112-minutes, which is just too much for some of its fans to take in.
Yet, when it finally all comes undone, Five Nights At Freddy’s just winds up hammering a hollow shell of horror.
MPAA Rating: PG-13.
Runtime: 109 mins
Director: Emma Tammi
Writer: Scott Cawthon; Seth Cuddeback; Emma Tammi
Cast: Josh Hutcherson; Piper Rubio; Elizabeth Lail
Genre: Horror
Tagline: Can You Survive?
Memorable Movie Quote: "Just keep your eyes on the monitors and keep people out. Piece of cake."
Theatrical Distributor: Universal Pictures
Official Site: https://www.facebook.com/FNAFMovie/
Release Date: October 27, 2023
DVD/Blu-ray Release Date:
Synopsis: Follows a troubled security guard as he begins working at Freddy Fazbear’s Pizza. While spending his first night on the job, he realizes the night shift at Freddy’s won’t be so easy to make it through.
