Before I get into this review I'd like to say Happy Halloween to yall! Also I want it to be known that although I'm not a fan of this movie, you can and should enjoy it, if you do. We need more joy in this world, so if you found that in this film then that makes me very happy. Anyways...
Extreme disappointment. Absolutely no surprises at all. It's exactly what I was expecting, but I'm sad nonetheless. Harr har harharr har har harhar har harrr....
This movie has quite an array of flaws, but let me express what I enjoyed first:
I really liked the cameos. Normally I'd absolutely hate a YouTuber cameo in a studio feature film, but they were fun, especially CoryxKenshin's which was well acted and executed. The animatronics are really well made, they look and move exactly the way you'd imagine them. (Though the sound design for them was too sci-fi sounding and the red angry eyes make them 1000% less creepy.) The acting was fine. The only performance I disliked was Vanessa, but I'll get into that later. Overall, there's a lot to like for a fan of the franchise.
But this is a movie. It can please the (easily impressed) fans, but if it doesn't stand as a good film, then I struggle to enjoy it. And struggle I did.
The main antagonist of this film is the writing. The characters are really shallow and only a few side characters are actually interesting. The plot around Mike's trauma and his brother's kidnapping is really overplayed and poorly resolved. Or rather not resolved at all. He just suddenly decides to stop obsessing over it without anything really leading up to it. The climax of the film happens and he's now a better forward-thinking guy literally overnight.
Vanessa's character is the worst in the film. She just kinda shows up and dumps exposition whenever the Lore needs to be established. Her character appears way too often to feel natural for the story, she just kinda pops into a situation when more exposition and Lore is needed. Also her performance was pretty weak, I was not convinced or moved by most of her scenes. She just felt very awkwardly fit into the movie, much like a lot of other things were.
Also Mike's action in the pizzeria is such a missed opportunity. I was hoping to watch him survive an onslaught of animatronic terror, but I just watched him sleep instead. He dreams the same dream like so many times it's just super boring and redundant, considering most times there isn't any advancement to the narrative. The dream thing should have just happened once or twice. Instead of seeing the situational horror and fun that the games are loved for, we got cheap dream sequences that offer almost nothing interesting, scary or fun. My man Mike Schmidt just slept through 4 out of the 5 nights at Freddy's. William Afton was cool. But his appearance in the climax was just really sudden and goofy. What happened to Mike's aunt was not explained at all amd there's no resolution for what happened to her or after. Did she die? I don't know. I guess they just forgot about her, even though her part of the story takes up so much of the movie. All in all, the story, plot and characters are very poorly written.
I wouldn't have an issue with any of that, if the film was more horror-focused and placed more attention and screen-time to the scares, atmosphere and terror. But it doesn't. This film places most of its focus on the characters and their story.
The horror is barely there, and at most times is really watered down and sanitized.The most unnerving scene was at the very beginning of the film, with the fuckin buzz saw mask thing. Everything else is practically cartoon violence. I wanted shots of the animatronics in dark corners, whispers of pain and static echoing through the halls. (A scene of someone hiding in one of the suits would've been really cool too) I wanted tension, guts, atmosphere and horror but all I got was a scene of them building a play fort out of dining tables.
The scene with Foxy pursuing Abby was absolutely not scary. The scene with the animatronics killing the burglars wasn't scary. That jumpscare with the Foxy kid screaming and crying blood was almost scary, but it just made me laugh instead. The only real scares were the fucking balloon boy figure jumpscares, which was just a running gag.
So, it isn't focused on horror. It focuses most of its run time on the characters and narrative. But the characters and narrative suck. The horror takes back seat to it, but it's incredibly unmoving and redundant. The terrible writing is the main star of this movie, which makes it a drag to watched.
I never expected it to be great at all, but I wanted fun, I wanted thrills. I just got load of Vanessa's exposition, bad horror moments and Mike's custody battle instead.
Most fans of the franchise love it. The audience score on Rotten Tomatoes is 89% (as of 10-31-2023). Though I'm not surprised. After the catastrophic train wreck FNAF Security Breach released, the fanbase ate it up and loved it, despite it being absolutely terrible in almost every way.
If it has the FNAF branding and theme, it's bound for success and appeal. The movie is somewhat decent as an adaptation and doesn't stray too far from the concept. Good enough for the fanbase. But I wanted Five Nights at Freddy's, and I still feel like I never got that.
I'm glad I got to see this movie, and I don't ever want to watch it ever again. It's not remotely scary or fun enough to revisit.
But at least I got to see MatPat in the FNAF movie as a waiter named Ness who says "but that's just a theory" so it's obviously a 10/10 movie that I will watch every day.
⭐⭐⭐⚫⚫⚫⚫⚫⚫⚫