Summary
Five Nights at Freddy’s makes the most of its iconic characters, delivering a fun, twisted slice of horror. It might be low on the scares, but this adaptation will win over fans of the series with its carefully placed cameos and entertaining Easter eggs.
2023 seems to have brought an end to the curse of the video game adaptation, with The Last of Us gaining countless award nominations and The Super Mario Bros. Movie dominating the box office. Another adaptation that is hoping to earn some serious money this year is Peacock’s Five Nights at Freddy’s, which fans will be happy to hear is a real crowd-pleaser, one which has been released just in time for Halloween.
Five Nights at Freddy’s (2023) review and plot summary
Directed by Emma Tammi, this creepy film adaptation focuses on troubled security guard Mike Schmidt (Josh Hutcherson), who suffers from intense recurring nightmares. He accepts a job patrolling a spooky, neglected building, which used to be the home of Freddy Fazbear’s Pizza, an eighties family entertainment center famous for housing a gang of sinister animatronic creatures.
Mike sleeps through most of his shifts but soon befriends a local police officer called Vanessa (Elizabeth Lail), who has a nostalgic connection to the place. She introduces Mike to the singing and dancing animatronic creatures, the iconic characters from the frightening horror-themed video game series of the same name, which are fronted by the titular Freddy Fazbear, a gigantic robotic bear.
Of course, at night these creatures come to life, gleefully attacking any intruders that dare to step foot within the complex. The creatures seem to leave Mike alone for the most part but are obsessed with his little sister Abby, who he is forced to drag along on his shifts. As soon as she enters the building, all hell breaks loose.
Mike must protect his younger sister from these terrifying robots, whilst uncovering a haunting secret from his own past. Will Mike be able to escape the building alive and solve his mystery before it is too late or will he be gruesomely killed by the animatronic beasts?
Is Five Nights at Freddy’s worth watching?
Five Nights at Freddy’s can be quite predictable and simplistic at times, but it still works perfectly as a genuinely entertaining popcorn flick. The adaptation is brimming with fun cameos and crowd-pleasing Easter eggs, but it is still accessible to non-fans, to all the viewers who are totally unaware of the video game’s lore, just like me.
This movie has been advertised as a horror film and it does include some gory, gruesome fun, but it relies too heavily on generic jump scares to do the legwork, with very little tension or build-up to speak of. Horror fans may be disappointed with the lack of genuine scares in this movie, although the film still has a playful, twisted side to it. This is elevated by the iconic creatures and a surprisingly layered backstory.
Five Nights at Freddy’s takes a little time to warm up, spending the first half of its 2-hour runtime setting up the story and teasing the horrors to come. Viewers are later rewarded in an exciting final third as the film delivers on the goods with plenty of trashy reveals and some entertaining action sequences.
Overall, this is an adequate horror flick, which will please the die-hard fans out there more than the general public. And yet it still succeeds as a standalone film on its own merits. It just felt like it needed a little more bite to it in the end.
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