Welcome to Freddy’s! How The Film ‘Friday Nights at Freddy’s’ Compares to Previous Franchise Offerings

In 2013, Scott Cawthon was told that his family-friendly game Chipper and Sons Lumber Co. about a lumberjack beaver, was too scary with a protagonist that resembles an animatronic. Disheartened yet unwilling to give up, Cawthon capitalized on his strengths and created a point-and-click horror game featuring scary animatronics.  

August 8th, 2014 saw the birth of Five Nights at Freddy’s. A franchise whose fame would reach unprecedented heights. A franchise that as of now has nine mainline games, over 20 books (including graphic novels) and a film.  

Fans have been clamoring to see Freddy and his animatronic friends on the silver screen and now, nine years later, we finally have on film, Five Nights at Freddy’s.  

With the source material being so vast and becoming murkier and murkier with each new release, it is difficult for anyone to keep up with the lore as most of it references the numerous books.  

What started as ‘getting stuffed in the animatronic suit means death’ has now become ‘get in the animatronic if you want to live.’ The animatronics have gone from robotic suits possessed by the ghosts of dead children hunting adults, to ghosts/A.I. of adults that function as benevolent guardians of children.  

Essentially, the current games are trying their best to be the opposite of the original games. With the focus of the protagonists themselves shifting from overworked adults to criminal tweens. Back in the day, one had to piece together the mystery surrounding the pizzeria with only a few obscure clues and combing through the game files. It added to the horror aspect, playing Sherlock Holmes — making endless theories about who what when how where? Who was responsible for the bite of ’87? Is it all just a dream? Would the animatronics kill you if you asked for pineapples on pizza?  

There are some who painstakingly read all the books and connect the dots to the numerous new characters introduced there and there are others who simply stick to the games, blissfully unaware of what’s happening but sticking around for the occasional scare and nostalgia. Indeed, times were simple when you’re a bored security guard in an office, hunted down by killer animatronics rather than a child trying to solve AR puzzles in an abandoned Pizzaplex.  

With the confusing and mammoth source material, adapting FNAF to film was no doubt going to be a challenge. The story needed to be tweaked to please both long-time or casual fans and bring in fresh blood. As a result, what we get is a completely different take on the first game featuring fan favorite embellishments from the newer games/books. 

You have security guard Mike Schmidt who has no other choice but to take a job guarding the decrepit and decidedly haunted Pizzeria if he wants to keep his only remaining sibling Abby with him. Mike realizes that the ghosts of children possessing the animatronics might be able to help him uncover who was responsible for kidnapping his younger brother during a camping trip gone wrong. The animatronics agree, but demand Abby in exchange. Mike changes his mind and there’s a final showdown (if it can be called that) where (spoiler alert) the actual villain William Afton dies by being trapped in the suit of Spring Bonnie turning into Springtrap.  

Make no mistake, this is still Five Nights at Freddy’s but in an alternative universe. The plot is cohesive, and condensed, albeit with a couple of plot holes. The nights have been split evenly and the film wasn’t boring or dragging. But if the intention was to recreate the atmosphere of the first game that catapulted FNAF to success, it didn’t really capture that feeling.   

I watched this film alone in a theater. It was eerie and unsettling and before the film began, it really felt as though at any moment Freddy himself was going to pop in through the exit doors resulting in my gruesome demise. Fortunately, that did not happen. Unfortunately, that was perhaps the only time there was some feeling of fear during the entire 109 minutes that I was there.  

The FNAF movie is a lot of things but scary isn’t one of them. What the FNAF film does is take the iconic location of the first game and use the free roam exploration feature from the ninth game. Ideally, this should have been nightmare fuel considering that’s exactly what the fan-made game Fazbear Nights does.  

Instead, what we really have are mostly harmless, confused and lost animatronics that just want to build blanket forts. Heartwarming, but it feels more like a Hallmark Holiday film rather than Halloween Horror which is what this is advertised as. With the PG rating that ranges from ages 12 to 18, it bars what the actual target audience is — nine and below.  

Though we can’t really blame the film since that is the direction the games themselves are taking.  

Seeing Freddy Fazbear’s pizzeria and the original animatronic quartet was a treat. Especially Foxy and Bonnie, who have more or less been swept aside into the ruins of the pizzeria like a distant memory. Well, Foxy has but you can still find Bonnie’s corpse (husk?) in the DLC of Security Breach. The animatronics look like they did in the heydays of the Pizzeria — bright, cuddly and child-friendly (which they are). The animatronics are impeccably clean, how they manage to be spotless in the dilapidated grimy ruins of the pizzeria is a mystery we might never solve. There’s not a patch of dirt on them or a stray blood splatter. Not at all looking like they’ve been housing the decomposing bodies of children for twenty years. Unsurprising since Jim Henson’s Creature Shop who did the puppets for Sesame Street created the animatronics in the FNAF film. Chica in fact looks like Big Bird’s cousin. In terms of the most dangerous animatronic, Cupcake takes the cake.  

Somehow despite being a film about the animatronics, they don’t nearly get enough screentime as they should, which is what everybody came to see. A blink-and-you-miss-it scene for Golden Freddy? Who went all the way to escort Abby to the pizzeria and murder the evil aunt? Where did he come from, where did he go?   

In the game, even a moment’s rest can result in Mike Schmidt’s untimely death. In the film, Mike Schmidt can safely sleep for hours on end, in a self-induced narcoleptic state and the animatronics would probably cover him in a blanket. 

The film’s storyline has made an interesting change from that of the games. It has introduced Vanessa as William Afton’s daughter instead of his protégé. What a protégé she is! The fact that she was the only police officer in the neighborhood and helped cover up all the murders conveniently. More than her serial killer father, Vanessa is the one to watch out for.  

The film’s end paves way for a sequel which would probably be an adaptation of the third game. Going forward, the FNAF cinematic continuity will certainly see a dramatic turn of events. Hopefully something darker and scarier.   

One thing that can be said of the FNAF fanbase is definitely how loyal and supportive they seem to be to the franchise. Be it building actual working animatronic replicas (have we learned NOTHING from the games?!) or spending hours decoding theories. A lot of the reason for FNAF’s popularity can be attributed to YouTube gameplays and theories. It was surprising to find Sparky the Dog slumped in a corner of the pizzeria in the film. Sparky was actually a hoax animatronic created during the time that players were grasping at straws in dark corners of the pizzeria for lore. Sparky was rumored to appear backstage while checking the security cameras. Funnily enough in the film, Sparky does exist and appears backstage, where he was supposed to be. The film’s inclusion of YouTuber cameos and fan theories strongly reinforces the fact that more than anything, this movie is for the fans. 

And that’s certainly been heard loud and clear. As the credits rolled and The Living Tombstone’s “Five Nights at Freddy’s” track played, as a player you can’t help but feel some amount of exuberance that you got to see the original Freddy and co. on screen. You instantly get transported to the simpler times of 2014.  

Don’t go in expecting the jump scares the FNAF games are known for.  

Don’t go expecting to see death via dismemberment or anything that’s gruesome. Okay, there is one scene probably referencing the famed Bite of ’87 but you don’t explicitly see the bite itself. No frontal lobe is ripped in half. 

Don’t go in expecting a horror film that has come around in time for Halloween.  

Go in expecting a film from Fazbear Entertainment in its heydays, before William Afton decided to go around murdering children and stuffing them into animatronic suits.  

At the end of the night, 6:00 AM rather, the FNAF film was not made for a general audience. It was made for the loyal frequenters of anything created by Fazbear Entertainment, Inc.