After years of waiting and wondering, the “Five Nights at Freddy’s” movie finally hit theaters. Having been a huge fan of the series since fifth grade, I bought tickets months in advance and even prepared matching costumes with my friends for when we saw it in theaters. But with all the hype and expectations surrounding this movie’s release, does it measure up?
The first “Five Nights at Freddy’s” (FNaF) game was released in 2014 by indie game developer Scott Cawthon. The game was supposed to be his last hurrah after all his past projects failed, but it was quickly brought into the spotlight by gaming YouTubers. This skyrocketed the game’s popularity and effectively saved Scott’s career as a game developer. After that, Scott pushed out game after game, continuing to grow the series’ popularity and building a dedicated fan base. FNaF basically became the Harry Potter of indie games.
With his growing success, Scott set his sights on expanding the series beyond just games. A FNaF movie was first teased in 2015, only a year after the release of the first game, but it ended up being dropped by Warner Bros. It would be another two years before the project was announced to be picked up, this time by Blumhouse Productions. The first director ultimately left the project and fans began to lose hope for the movie to ever actually come out until a cast list was revealed and a trailer was dropped.
That leads us back to the movie’s release on Oct. 26th. While the movie was warmly received by fans with an 89% audience score, it was torn apart by critics who gave it a 26%, both according to Rotten Tomatoes. After seeing the movie for myself, I think that’s because it wasn’t made for the critics.
At its core, the “Five Nights at Freddy’s” movie was made for fans of the series. Many of the things that made the movie so enjoyable for me only made sense because of how long I’ve loved FNaF. To me, the movie was a love letter to the longstanding fans of the series with its YouTuber cameos and little references to the series’ history. What made it so great was recognizing the reference to the infamous dream theory and cheering with a theater full of fans when MatPat said, “It’s just a theory.”
As a fan of horror movies, it wasn’t all that good. The scariest thing about the movie was the atmosphere and the Balloon Boy jump scares. The main antagonist’s fight felt anticlimactic after his amazing entrance, but the special effects and animatronic designs were all very well done.
Overall, would I recommend the movie to just about anyone who asked? Absolutely. Despite its flaws, I loved the movie and would see it again in a heartbeat. Do I think it’s one of the best horror movies I’ve seen? No. At the end of the day, the “Five Nights at Freddy’s” movie wasn’t made for the horror aficionados; it was made for the fans, and that’s exactly what it needed to be.
