Fans love to defend movies that get blasted by critics. "This is a movie for real people," they say. "Not elitists in ivory towers." Well, sometimes critics are right, and honestly I get annoyed that fans are so eager to line up for buffets of mediocrity and chow down like they're being gifted filet mignon. "Don't bother making any effort on our part," they say to movie studios, "we'll be satisfied with any crap you want to feed us." Wouldn't it be nice if we held filmmakers to a higher standard? If your favorite IP could be made into a movie AND that movie could also be, you know, good? It's not actually an impossible dream. You just have to stop licking boots.
Oh, well. It's just a movie. It's not like lives hang in the balance, I guess. But they did get my money, so I think I have a right to complain.
Whenever a much-anticipated movie takes forever to get into production, the excuse is always the same: the filmmakers are waiting for the right script. Then you see the finished film and think, "THAT was the right script? Surely at least one of the other two dozen options from the slush pile was better than this one." Five Nights at Freddy's suffers from a standard plot involving a security guard with haunted eyes trying to pull his life together so his aunt won't take custody of his younger sister. Yawn. But wait, if you were worried the dour protagonist doesn't have a Tragic Backstory, you're in luck! His younger brother (a different younger sibling than the one he's raising now) was abducted from a campsite when they were children, and Older Brother feels responsible as the only witness. Do his recurring nightmares about the incident tie in somehow with the current spooky shenanigans unfolding at the arcade-slash-pizza-place known as Freddy Fazbear's? If you think they do not, you've obviously never seen a film before.
Despite the story being so thin you could use it as tissue paper next time you're wrapping a gift, the screenwriters (including FNaF creator Scott Cawthon and director Emma Tammi) stretch the rusty plot mechanics to nearly two hours. Why? Who knows? Even the pre-FNaF cash-ins like The Banana Splits Movie and Willy's Wonderland were smart enough to keep the action under 90 minutes. The film is chock full of characters that absolutely do not matter, like love-interest/cop Vanessa (fulfilling the obnoxious archetype of "character who knows more than she lets on about the scary goings-on but refuses to adequately warn the main character so he has no idea what kind of trouble he's getting himself into until it's too late for everybody") and waste-of-time-and-talent sneerfest Aunt Jane, perplexingly played by the overqualified '90s ingenue Mary Stuart Masterson. I guess everybody needs a paycheck. The screentime dedicated to superfluous characters ensures that our main protagonists, sadboy Mike and his preadolescent sister Abby, receive zero of the development necessary to actually make them interesting or complex.
There's exactly one good scene in Five Nights, involving a group of intruders getting picked off one at a time by the animatronics. Tammi shows the aplomb of a PG-13 Sam Raimi, energizing the sequence with rapid-fire editing and kinetic camera movements and suggesting violence with shadows and abstractions that feel like fun artistic choices rather than concessions to the MPAA. Would that Tammi had been let off the leash more often. As we were treated to the umpteenth scene of Josh Hutcherson attempting to interrogate ghosts in his repeating dream, I kept myself awake by pondering why Cawthon was apparently so insistent that his hollow, schlocky video game premise be turned into this turgid melodrama instead of an adrenaline-fueled, no-holds-barred free-for-all. The final showdown, unfortunately, commits the greatest sin of all: anticlimax.
My two notes of genuine appreciation for the film come down to the impressive, full-size animatronics created by the Jim Henson shop--thank God the film avoided CGI--and Matthew Lillard working his butt off to be the same gleeful scenery-chewer he was back in Scream, albeit with a much weaker character this time around. Other than that, I suppose I'm just glad the film avoids the same cynical, empty "wokespeak" that plagues other franchises aiming for Gen Z (not a self-conscious reference to "patriarchy" or "gaslighting" throughout the entire runtime, wonder of wonders). It's a tired movie, but at least it's merely tired in its old-fashioned storytelling rather than in a futile attempt to be up-to-the-minute as bait for "teh kidz".
If you're going to see it, see it in the theater, with fans of the video games attending in full cosplay regalia, cheering at Easter eggs and applauding any moment that musters even a smidgen of genuine entertainment value. I did, and the atmosphere accounted for about 80% of the actual fun quotient of the entire experience.
Oh, well. It's just a movie. It's not like lives hang in the balance, I guess. But they did get my money, so I think I have a right to complain.
Whenever a much-anticipated movie takes forever to get into production, the excuse is always the same: the filmmakers are waiting for the right script. Then you see the finished film and think, "THAT was the right script? Surely at least one of the other two dozen options from the slush pile was better than this one." Five Nights at Freddy's suffers from a standard plot involving a security guard with haunted eyes trying to pull his life together so his aunt won't take custody of his younger sister. Yawn. But wait, if you were worried the dour protagonist doesn't have a Tragic Backstory, you're in luck! His younger brother (a different younger sibling than the one he's raising now) was abducted from a campsite when they were children, and Older Brother feels responsible as the only witness. Do his recurring nightmares about the incident tie in somehow with the current spooky shenanigans unfolding at the arcade-slash-pizza-place known as Freddy Fazbear's? If you think they do not, you've obviously never seen a film before.
Despite the story being so thin you could use it as tissue paper next time you're wrapping a gift, the screenwriters (including FNaF creator Scott Cawthon and director Emma Tammi) stretch the rusty plot mechanics to nearly two hours. Why? Who knows? Even the pre-FNaF cash-ins like The Banana Splits Movie and Willy's Wonderland were smart enough to keep the action under 90 minutes. The film is chock full of characters that absolutely do not matter, like love-interest/cop Vanessa (fulfilling the obnoxious archetype of "character who knows more than she lets on about the scary goings-on but refuses to adequately warn the main character so he has no idea what kind of trouble he's getting himself into until it's too late for everybody") and waste-of-time-and-talent sneerfest Aunt Jane, perplexingly played by the overqualified '90s ingenue Mary Stuart Masterson. I guess everybody needs a paycheck. The screentime dedicated to superfluous characters ensures that our main protagonists, sadboy Mike and his preadolescent sister Abby, receive zero of the development necessary to actually make them interesting or complex.
There's exactly one good scene in Five Nights, involving a group of intruders getting picked off one at a time by the animatronics. Tammi shows the aplomb of a PG-13 Sam Raimi, energizing the sequence with rapid-fire editing and kinetic camera movements and suggesting violence with shadows and abstractions that feel like fun artistic choices rather than concessions to the MPAA. Would that Tammi had been let off the leash more often. As we were treated to the umpteenth scene of Josh Hutcherson attempting to interrogate ghosts in his repeating dream, I kept myself awake by pondering why Cawthon was apparently so insistent that his hollow, schlocky video game premise be turned into this turgid melodrama instead of an adrenaline-fueled, no-holds-barred free-for-all. The final showdown, unfortunately, commits the greatest sin of all: anticlimax.
My two notes of genuine appreciation for the film come down to the impressive, full-size animatronics created by the Jim Henson shop--thank God the film avoided CGI--and Matthew Lillard working his butt off to be the same gleeful scenery-chewer he was back in Scream, albeit with a much weaker character this time around. Other than that, I suppose I'm just glad the film avoids the same cynical, empty "wokespeak" that plagues other franchises aiming for Gen Z (not a self-conscious reference to "patriarchy" or "gaslighting" throughout the entire runtime, wonder of wonders). It's a tired movie, but at least it's merely tired in its old-fashioned storytelling rather than in a futile attempt to be up-to-the-minute as bait for "teh kidz".
If you're going to see it, see it in the theater, with fans of the video games attending in full cosplay regalia, cheering at Easter eggs and applauding any moment that musters even a smidgen of genuine entertainment value. I did, and the atmosphere accounted for about 80% of the actual fun quotient of the entire experience.
