'Five Nights at Freddy's' review: Video-game adaptation offers mild scares
(from left) Mike (Josh Hutcherson) and Abby (Piper Rubio) in "Five Nights at Freddy's", directed by Emma Tammi. Credit: Universal Pictures/Patti Perret
PLOT A security guard at a decrepit pizzeria discovers that the place is haunted.
CAST Josh Hutcherson, Piper Rubio, Elizabeth Lail
RATED PG-13 (mild scares and a teensy bit of blood)
LENGTH 1:50
WHERE Area theaters
BOTTOM LINE A kid-oriented horror film that’s unlikely to get grown-up hearts pounding.
Anyone who’s been to a Chuck E. Cheese will appreciate the diabolical pizza palace of the horror film “Five Nights at Freddy’s." Here, the animatronic figures come to life at night and roam the halls in search of fresh victims. Some get chomped in two, others are nearly ground into pepperoni.
As a symbol of childhood innocence curdled into nightmare — like the clown in “It” or the cute little critters of “Gremlins” — this concept has potential. Just one problem: “Five Nights at Freddy’s” is an adaptation of a video game that’s popular with children. That means the movie can’t get too gruesome or gory without losing its fan base. It’s rated PG-13 — and if you’re any older, you’ll probably find this movie more silly than scary.
Our hero is Mike (Josh Hutcherson, “The Hunger Games”), who as a child witnessed his little brother’s abduction. He has never gotten over it, and now he's under pressure as the sole source of support for his much younger sister, Abby (Piper Rubio). So Mike takes a job as night watchman at Freddy Fazbear’s Pizza, a once-popular, now abandoned restaurant on the outskirts of town. The pay isn’t great, his employment officer says breezily, “but the hours are worse!” All Mike has to do is stay awake (and, it turns out, stay alive).
Minor spoiler: The history of Freddy’s is somehow intertwined with a local serial killer who preyed on children. All this according to a local cop, Vanessa (Elizabeth Lail), who drives by for the occasional visit. “Have you met them yet?” she asks Mike, referring to the restaurant’s life-size robot-puppets, which include Foxy, Chica and Bonnie along with Freddy himself (all built by Jim Henson’s Creature Shop). When Mike brings Abby to work one night (big mistake), she befriends these silent, mascot-like figures, unaware of their capacity to maim and murder.
Director Emma Tammi, who co-wrote the screenplay with Seth Cuddeback and the game’s creator, Scott Cawthon, deserves credit for envisioning Mike as a fairly complex character. The rest of the material doesn’t do him justice, though. The convoluted story feels reverse-engineered from the game, and the scares are too mild to make an impact. (It’s hard to tell how terrified we’re really supposed to be by a walking chicken named Chica.) “Five Nights at Freddy’s” may work as a starter horror film for kids, but they’ll probably be the only ones jumping out of their seats.
