What happens when a small indie game gains an immense amount of popularity rivaling that of a Triple A title? You get a little series like Five Nights at Freddy’s.
Five Nights at Freddy’s, or FNAF for short, is an indie game franchise developed by Scott Cawthon and was released on August 8th, 2014.
The game itself was fairly simple: a point and click horror set in an old, Chuck E. Cheese-styled pizzeria called Freddy Fazbear’s Pizza. As the night guard at the pizzeria, you have to keep tabs on the animatronics Freddy, Bonnie, Chica, and Foxy, because like the game says, “The animatronics do get a bit quirky at night.”
It became an immediate success that only grew in popularity thanks to gaming Youtubers like Markiplier, Matpat, and Dawko. Nine years since the first game’s release, it has managed to spawn nine more entries with another one on its way, over 20 books, and most recently, a film adaptation.
The movie was probably the most anticipated project since it was teased less than a year after the first game came out. But to the disappointment of many fans, it wouldn’t come out until years later on October 26, 2023.
The results? Well, they were very mixed.
While the critic score on Rotten Tomatoes is sitting at 30%, the audience score is at 87% — the score of 87, if you will. Much of the discussion online has expressed that the FNAF movie was strictly directed at fans, and they wouldn’t be wrong.
The movie is somewhat similar to the games: it follows Mike Schmidt, a struggling man who takes a night guard job at the pizzeria, so that he can afford to keep his little sister, Abby. But, throughout the movie, Mike is haunted by dreams depicting the disappearance of his little brother and he begins to learn the disturbing truth behind his job.
Things get even weirder after a new character, Officer Vanessa, lets him know about the missing children’s incident that occurred at the pizzeria around the 1980s.
The whole part of going to work at Freddy’s is pretty much the same as the original game, but there are many differences to the source material as well, like Mike having a little sister, or the character of Officer Vanessa existing as a whole. Originally, Vanessa was a character from the most recent game in the series, FNAF: Security Breach, where she served as a secondary antagonist.
While this premise does provide newcomers a different gateway to the franchise than the games, it’s easy to see why many unfamiliar with the series might be put off by the movie. When asked what she thought, student Talli Choksub stated, “The movie itself was not that great. It was like your basic horror movie with a plot, but a kind of bland one. I understand why people would like it —’cause nostalgia, but the movie itself was kinda mid, in my opinion.”
There were also some elements present that left people divided on the movie’s quality, like the rating and the horror in general. With a PG-13 rating, gore and extreme violence wasn’t allowed, which also seemed to have disappointed many fans, as they didn’t think a PG-13 rating would be able to do the horrors of the franchise justice.
Still, the movie has earned over 200 million dollars worldwide, despite the many differing opinions from both fans and casual moviegoers. “The movie was very creative. I like the fact that they took some more liberty to change the lore compared to the games, such as Vanessa having a much bigger role in the story, and I was quite satisfied with the casting,” said Sebastian Gopar.
