The Stream: Lackluster attempts at any scares and overall pretty predictable

The Big Screen: Good production design and nice animatronics

The Final Bill: The disjointed storylines never really come together.

– S2S: Movie Review and Trip Fontaine
Director: Emma Tammi
Writers: Scott Cawthon, Seth Cuddeback, Emma Tammi
Stars: Josh Hutcherson, Piper Rubio, Elizabeth Lail, Mary Stuart Masterson, Matthew Lillard
Genre: Horror, Mystery, Thriller
Rating: PG-13 for strong violent content, bloody images and language
Runtime: 1 hour 43 minutes
Production Companies: Universal Pictures, Blumhouse Productions, ScottGames
Platform: Released in theaters and on Peacock October 27, 2023
Notable Trailers: Argylle, The Marvels, Thanksgiving, Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom

Halloween season has finally come to an end, Streamers. But, before it left us, we got to watch one more coveted title, Five Nights at Freddy’s. This movie is a video game adaptation that features a troubled security guard, Mike Schmidt (Josh Hutcherson) who begins working at Freddy Fazbear’s Pizza to make ends meet. During his nightshift, he realizes that things aren’t as they seem. Unfortunately, these overnight shifts won’t be filled with easy naps like he anticipated. Pretty soon, he will unveil what actually happened at Freddy’s. Let’s see what hijinks ensue.

Apparently, this movie is based on or takes inspiration from a video game series from 2014. We had never heard of it. In my opinion, I would’ve left the game where it was. Why mess up a game that no one ever heard of? Just let the cult classic be just that because the execution of the movie doesn’t seem to allow for the same thing as the fully thought-out game. It does not feel like the filmmakers fully fleshed this one out. The movie wasn’t really scary, never fully made complete sense as to what was going on, and then finally was so unbelievably obvious that it made the movie just linger on forever.

Trip: I have to agree with you. This movie didn’t do anything for me. I didn’t know that it was an adaptation of a videogame series until after I’d seen it. I don’t think that really matters because the movie should be able to stand on its own. Actually, the premise is what drew me in. I’ve thought since I was very little how scary it could be if the animatronics at Chuck E. Cheese’s came alive. Unfortunately, this movie did not sell the fear, horror or tension of that. The movie was neither scary, funny or engaging enough. It really felt like a boring and less inventive Black Mirror episode – most of those are better than this.

Five Nights at Freddy’s could’ve been a really scary mess, but they failed at executing an actual horror mystery with obvious cuts that lacked any type of mystery. On a Halloween scale, this movie isn’t scary. On a normal movie scale, this movie is only basically interesting enough to keep your attention throughout. Grab a handful of popcorn and check this out if you can’t find anything scary and you just want to reminisce on how Chuck E. Cheese’s was quite scary.