Five Nights at Freddy's

This weekend, Five Night at Freddy's, a movie adaptation of a video game of the same name releases in theaters and on Peacock. Five Nights and Freddy's follows security guard, Mike Schmidt as he he struggles to keep a job and raise his sister. When he accepts a job at a shutdown family fun center, he soon discovers that there is more to the place than he was told. To put things into perspective, I have never played any of the games or read any of the books associated with this franchise. I was just sold on it by the premise of if Chuck E. Cheese came alive and killed people.

With the limited experience, I had with this franchise, I thought this movie was fine. It wasn't great. It wasn't terrible. It was just ok. From what I have heard, fans of the franchise seem to really enjoy this movie as it is an accurate portrayal of the game. Since I have never played the games, a lot of this was lost on me. I thought the premise itself was interesting enough. The idea of a Chuck E. Cheese-like place with killer animatronics sounded entertaining and to a certain degree it was. It had some fun kills and solid moments with the robots. I also thought it was cool to see Josh Hutcherson (Peeta from The Hunger Games) in a new role. He hasn't been in much since The Hunger Games so it was fun to see him get some time to shine in a lead role. The movie also had more emotion to it than I was expecting as the movie at its core is about the relationship between Mike and his younger sister. I also thought the big reveal at the end of the movie was pretty well done. I wasn't able to predict it which doesn't happen super often. Finally, I thought that the movie had a good level of scariness to it. It has a few solid jump scares and the animatronics themselves are moderately horrifying. I probably won't visit Chuck E Cheese after it is closed anymore.

The biggest issue with this film is that there is too much unnecessary backstory. I was interested in this movie to see giant animatronics kill people. I didn't really care about Mike's dead brother and the custody battle with his aunt. I felt it bogged down the story too much and made it take too long to get going. There also wasn't as much horror action as I wanted. Because of the previous issues, it took way too long to get going, and didn't spend as much time at Freddy's as I wanted.

Overall, this is an entertaining enough film that has some solid scares and emotion that just gets too bogged down with side plots and back story. I probably missed some references not having played the game but the movie still does a decent enough job of bringing in people not familiar with the story.

Score: 6.5/10 Grade: B-

Recommendation: Check it out if you are a fan of the games, otherwise just stream it.