Mirror review: Five Nights At Freddy's

Five Nights At Freddy’s, known among fans as FNAF, is a long-running indie horror game franchise that was first released in 2014. Its creator, Scott Cawthon, launched the game without a clear direction of where the series would go. Ultimately, Scott chose to go with mysterious, unsettling, and difficult to understand. 

Going into the film without prior knowledge or expertise in this franchise (which includes a novel trilogy) will only serve to perplex viewers, as it's littered with references to outside material that even dedicated FNAF players may not understand. This painstaking attention to detail is thanks to the production’s close collaboration with Scott Cawthon, who worked as an advisor and was granted a lot of freedom to adapt his work. While this may be a feast for those most feverous superfans, anybody outside that demographic won’t have nearly as much fun.

Set in the year 2000, the movie follows Mike Schmidt (Josh Hutcherson), who is a struggling young man, troubled by his past. He struggles to take care of his little sister Abby (Piper Rubio), as he can barely take care of himself. In the midst of Mike’s own struggles, he’s in a legal conflict with his aunt over the custody of Abby. Mike needs stability in order to keep Abby, and recent events have left Mike unemployed, desperate enough to visit a career counselor, hoping to possibly find a job. Unfortunately, the counselor only has a single opening: an old Chuck E. Cheese-styled restaurant, complete with animatronics, where he’d take the night shift keeping watch over the abandoned building. At first, he shows reluctance, but needs stability so he ultimately accepts the job, working nights at Freddy Fazbear’s pizzeria. 

Sadly, the movie doesn’t do the series justice. It feels rushed and tries to accomplish too much in too short of a time. Some of the movie's most important moments were anti-climactic due to poor scene structuring and lack of explanation of certain plot points.

The casting, on the other hand, is right on. Josh Hutcherson is the perfect fit as Mike, a depressed young man who experienced great loss while having to maintain a great responsibility (a side of Mike that we don't see in the game). 

What ultimately holds the movie back is its PG-13 rating. Making it R rated would have given the filmmakers more leeway to include the qualities that made the games so special. 

The first installment of Scott Cawthon’s three-movie deal with Blumhouse productions has laid the foundation for the remaining two. I’m interested in what direction production will take with the sequel and see how far it branches out from the games and books. I’m also excited to see Matthew Lillard reprise his role as William Afton. The short amount of time that he appears in the first movie is special and feels uneasy, which is how the audience should feel. 

The FNAF storyline has become so big and convoluted that no one truly knows what direction the next two movies will take, but that's what makes it so exciting. And to see the creator so engaged with the film makes the entire FNAF community happy.