Five Nights at Freddy’s is based on the video game franchise of the same name that has been adapted for the screen by director Emma Tammi from a screenplay she co-wrote with Scott Cawthon and Seth Cuddeback.
Josh Hutcherson stars as Mike Schmidt, a troubled security guard, who accepts a night-time job at Freddy Fazbear’s Pizza, a once-successful but now abandoned family entertainment centre, where he discovers its four animatronic mascots – Freddy Fazbear, Bonnie, Chica, and Foxy – move on their own and potentially kill anyone that is still there after midnight.
I am not a gamer, so I was unaware of the source material, though it did seem uncannily similar to the hugely enjoyable Willy’s Wonderland from a couple of years ago. Unfortunately, where that Nicolas Cage movie was pared down fun, Five Nights at Freddy’s is all over the place. Instead of concentrating on the killer creatures, much of the plot is taken up with Mike trying to find answers to who snatched his younger brother when he was aged 12.
Eventually, we find out that the mascots are somehow inhabited by the ghosts of other dead children taken and killed by the same person who took Mike’s sibling. In fact, it is mentioned in passing that the bodies are inside the creatures but that is never addressed again, and that demonstrates the generally shoddy plotting.
The whole thing makes little suspense, has disappointingly little in the way of gory kills, an obvious bad guy and is not at all frightening.
Rating: 4.5 out of 10