Five Nights at Freddy’s — the lovable bloodthirsty robots
Uncategorized November 1, 2023, Comments Off 133The video game turned movie, “Five Nights at Freddy’s”, came out on Oct. 31, which is right on time for Halloween weekend. This Universal-Blumhouse motion picture made $78 million from box office tickets and is considered the biggest opening weekend by Blumhouse, who produced movies like “Megan” and “The Exorcist: Believer.”
The video game was created by Scott Cawthon and is about being a night security guard at Freddy Fazbear’s Pizza. Which looks an awful lot like the Chuck-E-Cheese arcade many kids grew up having their birthday party in. However, the fuzzy animatronics come alive at night and the goal is to stay alive for five nights.
Bonnie, Chica, Foxy, and Freddy—adorable and harmless during the day—turn into killers who try to force humans into animatronic suits during the night. As the nights progress so does the storyline and your role as night guard gets much more dangerous.
As far as the film goes, it retains the same goal and imagery as the video game. Mike Schmidt, the night guard, takes the job to be able to keep his sister from their aunt who wants custody of her.
They give the characters more of a backstory and it makes them more than a 2-dimensional character from a video game. There is also a “bad guy” and a hidden story behind the animatronics that stays true to the storyline of the game. They may be animatronic killers who do terrible things, but there is much more to them than nuts and bolts.
As the game has gained popularity over the years the demographic it caters to has become younger and younger. This led to the movie being marketed towards younger teens and the movie was not inherently scary in the way that I had hoped. It made me rethink going to a kid’s arcade, like Chuck-E-Cheese, because the animatronics are horrifying. With their jagged movements and unnatural blinking, it would be surprising if they weren’t murderous robots.
However, the movie did not give me that chill-inducing fear that one would experience seeing old, run-down animatronics. There were not very many jump-scare moments and the moments that did have them did not come from the robots.
“Five Nights at Freddy’s” does have an impressive following on YouTube. An article from Vox comments, “When the game launched, the platform was just beginning to embrace Let’s Play videos,” journalist Aja Romano writes, “a format in which gamers share their screens and comment on the game as they play it, so that audiences can follow along and enjoy their reactions.”
For this reason, the movie holds a feeling of nostalgia among those who would watch the YouTube videos and feel as if they were a part of the game as well as playing the game themselves. They even had cameos from popular YouTubers, if the sudden clapping and yelling from the audience was any indication.
Was it the greatest horror movie ever created? No, but it did make a lot of people happy they were able to see their childhood game on the big screen.