Five Nights at Freddy's

Nicolas Cage is sorely missed in Five Nights at Freddy's, not that he was ever on the film's cast list. He starred in 2021's Willy's Wonderland, however, which clearly took its cues from the video-game franchise that this attempt to start a corresponding movie series now officially adapts. Willy's Wonderland wasn't great, but a near-silent Cage battling demonic animatronics was always going to be worth seeing. Unsurprisingly, he's mesmerising. In comparison, the actual Five Nights at Freddy's feature stars Josh Hutcherson deep in his older brother phase, bringing weary charm to a by-the-numbers horror flick that's as routine as they come no matter whether you've ever mashed buttons along with its inspiration — which first dropped in 2014 and now spans nine main games, a tenth on the way and five spinoffs — or seen everyone's favourite Renfield, Pig and Color Out of Space actor give an unlicensed take a go. 

Writer/director Emma Tammi (The Wind), the game's creator Scott Cawthon (Scooby Doo, Where Are You? In... SPRINGTRAPPED!) and co-screenwriter Seth Cuddeback's (Mateo) movie iteration of Five Nights at Freddy's doesn't just arrive after a Cage film got there first; it hits after season 16 of It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia wreaked havoc on a comparable setting already in 2023. If you're looking for a pitch-black comedic skewering of eateries in the style of Chuck E Cheese, the IRL pizzeria-meets-arcade chain that Freddy Fazbear's Pizza is patently based on, that's the best of the year. So, the Five Nights at Freddy film lingers in multiple shadows. There's symmetry on- and off-screen as result: shining a torchlight around in the movie uncovers sights that its characters would rather not see, and peering even just slightly through recent pop culture shows that this picture isn't alone, either.

The concept in Five Nights at Freddy's whether you've got a controller in your hand or you're watching a flick: at the once-popular Freddy Fazbear's Pizza, which was big with families in the 80s, working the night shift at the restaurant's long-shuttered base has killer consequences. That's when the life-sized singing-and-dancing furry robots that performed shows for kids when the place was operational now go menacingly a-wandering, and also make their lack of fondness for visitors brutally known, causing a high staff turnover. Five Nights at Freddy's does explain why, but everything from what's going on to the reason behind it is horror movie 101. The film may take place in an eatery rather than a home — a creepy one, of course — but it's basically a haunted house affair, and happily ticks all of the most standard of genre boxes. 

Taking the gig from career counsellor Steve Raglan (Matthew Lillard, Scream) reluctantly, Mike Schmidt (Hutcherson, Futureman) doesn't want to be anywhere but his own abode come dark, let alone in a dilapidated old funhouse restaurant with anthropomorphic animal figures as one of its main attractions. But he's in need of work after being fired from his mall security job because he wrongly thought that a dad scolding his son was a man kidnapping a child, and reacted violently — and he has his ten-year-old sister Abby (Piper Rubio, Unstable) to look after. They're all that each other have left since the death of their parents and the abduction of their brother Garrett (Lucas Grant, The Patient) years before that, which Mike feels responsible for, other than the overbearing aunt (Mary Stuart Masterson, Blindspot) who is maliciously suing for custody. Mike normally spends his evenings attempting to find out what happened to Garrett via his dreams, a task he continues at Freddy's, with his preoccupation elsewhere giving the animatronics free rein. 

The place is inherently eerie in a dusty, overlooked, caught-out-of-time way — and also if you just think that giant teddy bears like Freddy can be ominous anyway — but Five Nights at Freddy's lead hasn't noticed until local cop Vanessa (Elizabeth Lail, You) drops by one night while patrolling her beat. Fuelled by his tragic past and ignoring the key 'don't fall asleep' rule of his overnight gig, he's too busy yawning his way to some shuteye to put dream theory to work to unlock his memories of the incident that shattered his family forever. Constructing a film around an oft-snoozing protagonist can be a double-edged sword, and cuts the wrong way here, reminding viewers that they might prefer to be slumbering as well. All that's endeavouring to keep most of the audience awake is predictable circuitry, from horror's current obsession with examining trauma's impact (and the genre's undying love of overusing any trend in flicks great, average and terrible) to overt nods in Stephen King and Scooby Doo's directions.

That Scooby Doo vibe is telling, though: rather than just trying to evoke nostalgia in viewers who can remember their days as kids in arcades, family-themed restaurants or combos of both, Five Nights at Freddy's is as much aimed at adolescents now. Accordingly, Tammi hasn't taken a Winnie-the-Pooh: Blood and Honey approach — not that that's a worthy example of blending cuddly critters with horror at all — with her film focusing on mood, anticipation, suggestion and jump scares over anything gory or terrifying. Younger audiences still deserve better than a movie this generic. Everyone deserves something other than a film where more time is expended on the build-up and backstory than with Freddy Fazbear, Foxy, Chica, Cupcake and Bonnie. Created by Jim Henson's Creature Shop, the mechanised mascots look the part, but are both under-deployed and then stuck going through the murderous motions.

Winking casting that gives away too much is also part of the Five Nights at Freddy's film experience. So is the pointless aunt subplot, which couldn't be more cartoonish. Scenes that do nothing but gush exposition — and ensure that there's zero mystery around who knows more than they're letting on — similarly bog down the movie. Hutcherson and Rubio nonetheless do well enough with pixel-thin characters, especially in a feature that frequently seems as if it has spliced an unrelated flick about sibling trauma into the Five Nights at Freddy's premise. A picture based on the gaming series was always bound to happen, and Blumhouse adding another established well-known horror name to a stable that also includes Black Christmas, Fantasy Island, The Invisible Man, The Craft's sequel, three Halloween movies, Firestarter and the latest The Exorcist entry was just as likely, but it shouldn't play like everything within it and about it is dully inevitable.