Review: Five Nights at Freddy’s

Director:  Emma Tammi

Stars:  Josh Hutcherson, Matthew Lillard, Elizabeth Lail

I am, for my sins, a LOST fan. Even the later seasons when the showrunners piled on the screwball sci-fi elements and flaky lore surrounding Jacob. Once, at a previous day job, I tried to methodically and rationally explain the overarching story of the show to a colleague who hadn’t seen a minute of it. I was doing pretty well, for a while, but even I knew it was all starting to sound a little suspect by the time I got to the words “frozen donkey wheel” (if you know, you know). All of which is to say that, as much as I love revisiting the adventures of Jack, Kate, Sawyer and co. on Mystery Island, I concede that it’s a pretty ludicrous and knotty proposition when you try seeing the whole.

The same, I assume, is true of Five Nights at Freddy’s; a surprisingly durable indie horror game that’s spawned multiple sequels in spite of what seems like a threadbare (or should that be threadbear – ha) premise rooted in the delivery of jump scares. Animatronic fuzzy monsters come to life in an abandoned pizzeria; try not to die. Seems simple enough, and plenty portable to a slender slasher movie template. But I’m an outsider looking in. I could never have dreamed there was so much more to it. Or that it could all be so convoluted, silly and tedious.

Video game creator Scott Crawthorn is on board here in the writer’s room with a cadre of other people to condense and remix all of the disparate game elements into a new cinematic franchise. Directed by Emma Tammi (who has a handful of lowkey, character-driven horror titles under her belt already), the resulting movie is a baffling, boring and woefully toothless slog, it’s two hours stretched out successfully to feel like five nights’ worth of filler. By the time plucky supporting actor Elizabeth Lail trips over several pages of exposition three quarters of the way through this thing, there’s not a single reason to care. I dare you to piece together what she says into something approaching sense.

Josh Hutcherson is Mike, a down-on-his-luck security guard who can’t keep a job because he keeps violently attacking people over his Trauma Issues™ surrounding the abduction of his younger brother Garrett many moons ago. He’s struggling to maintain custody of his younger sister Abby (Piper Rubio; awful), and so in desperation takes a gig as nightwatchman for a worthless, disused pizzeria filled with hulking animatronic creatures. Cue lethal games of hide and seek… right?

Wrong. The fluffy foursome have little interest in Mike, who’d much rather snooze on the job anyway so he can buff up on his lucid dreaming in an effort to remember who took little Garrett away. Between this and ambling chats with local police officer Vanessa (Lail), Five Nights at Freddy’s seems genuinely disinterested in the possibilities of its goofy conceit. The giant robots aren’t scary anyway; they’re friendly! They’ll help you build a fort if you want! They just don’t like vandals sent by Mike’s aunt (Mary Stuart Masterson), who’s bid for custody of Abby takes up another unruly chunk of the running time as she schemes away like a Home Alone villain.

It’s not until the final act – and 90 minutes that might’ve been 90 days – that things take a turn and Mike is forced into a showdown with these lumbering gizmos, but by that time any sense of ferocity in them has been well and truly neutered. Add in a late-arriving – and ridiculous – fifth member of their collective and Five Nights at Freddy’s scatters its toys all over the floor. Credibility fizzles and you’re left actually angry that its taken this long to get to such a stupid finale.

This thing is truly terribly paced, drawn out in a clumsy and conspicuously flimsy effort to make excuses for something that’s supposed to be frightening because its so inexplicable. If the games ran on the pulse-pounding logic of nightmares, the movie version eschews this in favour of stringing together nonsensical narratives, throwing a loop over some Past Trauma™ presumably because that’s just what you’re supposed to do now. If that wasn’t cumbersome enough, Five Nights at Freddy’s is one of those sad occasions where you really can’t tell what’s worse; the bad writing or the bad performances. Hutcherson sleepwalks his way through this thing, so he more-or-less gets a pass, but a lion’s share of the supporting cast have no such excuse. We’ll throw little Rubio a lifeline, too, for sheer inexperience, but the rest? Eesh.

Universal and Blumhouse are really tripping over themselves this year to undo a solid reputation for kicking out horror hits, slinging us an array of stinkers from Renfield to The Exorcist: Believer. The latter was universally (ha) trounced as inept fodder for dummies – a studio piece that misunderstood it’s forbearer and condescended to its audience – but Five Nights at Freddy’s is even worse. There’s a strong sense here that nobody involved believes in this product, but they’re marching forward with it anyway in the hopes that it’s a money machine. Two more of these are planned, I’ve heard. That’s an awful lot more Funko Pops being readied for landfill.