Hollywood has not been very successful at turning video games into movies, a disappointing streak that Five Nights at Freddy’s does nothing to correct. Despite being shepherded by veteran low-budget horror producer Jason Blum, this is a rather empty and unexciting attempt to attract horror fans during the Halloween season. Director Emma Tammi’s film squanders the game’s strange and unique-looking creatures and fails to give the characters written for the film any recognisable traits.
The script takes the game’s main character, Mike, and tries to add a human dimension by giving him a convoluted backstory. In the game, he’s a night watchman standing guard at the abandoned Freddy Fazbear’s Pizzeria. Here, Mike is a security guard, played by Josh Hutcherson, who’s forced to take a job at the place in order to keep custody of his little sister, Abby (Piper Rubio). There are some dark family secrets, ghosts, a helpful but wary policewoman (Elizabeth Lial) and, of course, the animatronic giant creatures that come to life and are at once cute and deadly.
The film’s first major misstep is that it doesn’t take advantage of its odd central location. An abandoned pizzeria with slot machines and pinball machines offers the opportunity to have fun with the retro Chuck E. Cheese-style setting. Instead, Tammi and production designer Marc Fisichella make the place rather drab, dark and colourless. It looks like any other warehouse with no distinguishing features. There’s also not enough of the animatronic creatures. Despite their distinctive look, they are not used effectively for either horror or comedy, missing the mark on both counts. A musical sequence that starts off as an entertaining way to set the film in motion is quickly cut.
As for the jolts and jump scares that audiences have come to expect from “Five Nights at Freddy’s”, there simply aren’t enough. The film contains just two such sequences, both of which are weakly choreographed with limited suspense and end with predictable results. Elsewhere, Tammi relies too much on the Newton Brothers’ loud, ominous music to manufacture thrills that are simply not there. There is no suspense and scene after scene takes too much time repeating the same beats.
So where does “Five Nights at Freddy’s” spend most of its running time, if not on delivering the promised thrills? The film mainly concentrates on Mike’s family travails and history. The screenplay, credited to the game’s creator Scott Cawthon, Seth Cuddeback and Tammi, flails around trying to come up with psychologically resonant characteristics for its protagonist. It ends up with a sluggish and implausible narrative, then spends too much time trying to make sense of absurd situations. It’s a humourless and overly serious take on its source material. As Mike explains midway through the film, this is a story about “ghost children possessing giant robots”, so why is it such a slog to watch? A missed opportunity.
Faced with a flat script and uninspired direction, the actors can’t save “Five Nights at Freddy’s”. Hutcherson manages to give his character the aptly confused look the plot demands, but that’s where the performance begins and ends. He repeats the same emotions over and over again, thus diminishing their impact. Lial has the very difficult task of trying to explain the ridiculous plot in a rather sincere way. She fails to wring any pathos out of it, never takes the chance to go big or camp, and ends up with a listless performance. Matthew Lillard overplays his smaller role, spoiling what should have been a major twist. Only Mary Stuart Masterson as Mike’s noxious aunt manages to escape unscathed with a wry take on her character that hints at how much better the film could have been if others had taken her cue.
The filmmakers behind Five Nights at Freddy’s made all the wrong choices. Instead of focusing on the animatronic characters, they decided to concentrate on a confusing plot and backstory for their protagonist. In trying to adapt the game for the screen, they forgot what made the original so special, and instead of entertaining audiences, they unintentionally wrung laughs out of the bizarre story.
