31 Days of Halloween: Five Nights at Freddy's

2023, Emma Tammi (The Wind) -- download

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I know very little about the survival-horror video game upon which the movie is based, but I do recall the fans being rather rabid about its production state, constantly nagging Jason Blum (Blumhouse Productions) on Twitter.

In my mind, the "movie based on the game" has already been made, and we saw it, and it was called Willy's Wonderland and for some reason, I never mentioned the connection. Also see The Banana Splits Movie for another take on "animatronic mascots go evil". Obviously, there is enough people who think those giant singing, talking, jerkily moving cartoon animals are fucking evil that it's in the horror movie psyche.

ANYWAYZ.

Mike (Josh Hutcherson, The Hunger Games) is not doing so well. He's a rather haggard looking mall security guard who tackles a guy over a child abduction misunderstanding. Mike has history with the topic, having lost his younger brother when they were kids. It obviously was the downfall of their family, as Mike is now stuck taking care of his little sister, and the parents are nowhere to be seen.

Mike's employment counsellor (Matthew Lillard, Scooby-Doo) suggests something that is a bit of a challenge, but Mike needs any job to retain the guardianship of his sister, before his evil Aunt Jane (Mary Stuart Masterson, Daniel Isn't Real) takes her away -- become the overnight guard at an abandoned themed pizza shop. Sounds easy enough.

I had always assumed the premise of the game was that you had to survive five nights to reap some sort of reward or be freed or whatever. But no, the idea is just that the main character survives the five nights. You would think nobody would want to stick around inside a creepy pizza place with homicidal animatronic creatures, but... I guess you need a job. In the movie, Mike sticks around in order to get paid, but really only becomes aware of the murder rampage in the last night.

For some reason, Blumhouse went with PG13 for the movie, which actually reduces the amount of expected.... well, horror. The focus of the movie ends up being more about Mike trying to use the situation to learn more about his brother's abduction, and the murderbots, while prevalent, are ... secondary to the focus of the story? The rest is just passable: acting, set design and action, and the jump scares are weak.