‘Five Nights At Freddy’s’ Review: PG-13 Movie Based On Popular Video Game Emphasizes Character Over Horror

In the new film version of the popular video game Five Nights At Freddy’s, it is the Jim Henson Creature Shop and its talented puppeteers and character actors who are the real stars of this Blumhouse take on the game that the under-25 male set particularly warmed up to since its debut in 2014. Whether they will be happy with this carefully constructed but safe PG-13 movie that sacrifices hard-core horror for character development and that at times just drags along, time will tell.

In case you aren’t familiar with the game franchise created by Scott Cawthorn, Five Nights At Freddy’s is a phenomenon in the sector, having hatched nine different games to date, several spinoffs, a novel trilogy and an anthology series all for the love of Freddy Fazbear, Bonnie, Chica and Foxy the Pirate, 70foot-tall animatronic creatures who are capable of violence or love depending who is in the room with them.

The PG-13 rating keeps the film from going into Chucky territory – still the crown jewel of the killer puppet subgenre – or even as far as M3GAN, the doll that turned to gold for Universal, which is releasing this one too. Young fans are going to find that Cawthorn, who co-wrote the screenplay with Seth Cuddeback and director Emma Tammi, is more interested in the psychological terrors of its main character Mike than any visceral horror that ventures into Saw territory. Example: The pre-credits sequence, set at the deserted Freddy Fazbear’s Pizzeria, intimates the grisly death of a security guard, but doesn’t show it.

The center of the story is Mike (Josh Hutcherson), a down-on-his-luck guy who has custody of his much-younger sister Abby (a very engaging Piper Rusio) but has never gotten over feeling responsible for the still-unsolved kidnapping of his younger brother Garrett (Lucas Grant in flashbacks). The incident haunts Mike’s dreams and even costs him a job. Desperate for work in order to keep mean Aunt Jane (a one-note Mary Stuart Masterson) from snatching Abby away from him, he reluctantly agrees to a dead-end night security job at the long abandoned, game-laden pizzeria where, as we come to learn, some very bad stuff happened to young kids before its shutdown. Is it haunted? Possibly.

Enter police officer Vanessa Shelly (Elizabeth Lail), who fills in Mike on the history of the joint, but seems to know a little too much. She shows him the star attractions of a band made up of these lovable(?) 7-foot-tall creatures who perform ’80s tunes and still seem to have their parts in working order.

When Aunt Jane signs onto a devious scheme hatched by Abby’s babysitter Maxine (Kat Conner Sterling) and her no-good BF to go in and trash the place in order to get Mike fired, the band of animatronic brothers show what they are capable of, even if Tammi keeps the gore to a minimum (a decapitation is only suggested in dark shadow). Abby, however, bonds with the creatures, complicating matters.

Much of this is predictable and I figured out exactly where it is going early on, but the execution is first rate even if the story itself is far less fun than actually playing the game. Shout-out to puppet wrangler supervisor Robert Bennett and the actors behind Freddy (Kevin Foster), Chica (Jess Weiss) and Bonnie (Jade Kindar-Martin) for giving it the old college try. But the true frights aren’t there, despite the ambiance suggesting they are coming. Hutcherson does his best but comes off as humorless and dour. Lail has her moments, and horror veteran Matthew Lillard turns up early on as the guy who gets Mike the Freddy Fazbear gig.

Producers are Jason Blum and Cawthorn.

Title: Five Nights At Freddy’s
Distributor: Universal
Release date: October 27, 2023 (theaters and Peacock)
Director: Emma Tammi
Screenwriters: Scott Cawthorn, Seth Cuddeback and Emma Tammi
Cast: Josh Hutcherson, Elizabeth Lail, Piper Rubio, Mary Stuart Masterson, Matthew Lillard, Lucas Grant, Kat Conner Sterling
Rating: PG-13
Running time: 1 hr 50 min