By Giulia Campora
“Five Nights at Freddy’s,” one of the most popular 2000s video games, has finally released its first live-action movie! The video game was first created by Scott Cawthon and saw the light of day on Aug. 8, 2014. This game of survival has gained lots of popularity throughout the years among horror gamers. Nine different series have been released up to today, and now this world has come to life!
The movie was released on Oct. 27 in theaters and on Peacock, a special subscription treat for its premium users. But (illegal) streaming sites were able to put the file online for their users who wanted to watch it and didn’t have enough money to subscribe to Peacock or go to the movies (that’s how I watched it in the first place).
Security guard Mike (Josh Hutcherson) agrees to watch over Freddy Fazbear’s Pizza, which used to be a popular pizzeria and video game arcade for families but shut down in 1980 after the mysterious disappearances of some children. Mike, firstly, doesn’t want to work there. Since he has to be employed to keep custody of his sister Abby (Piper Rubio), before his scheming aunt Jane (Mary Stuart Masterson) takes her away from him forever to collect child support checks, Mike reluctantly agrees.
Another interesting thing is that Mike also suffers from recurring lucid nightmares about a traumatic episode of his past: the abduction of his young brother Garrett (Lucas Grant); these dreams become more vivid when he begins to work at Freddy’s, symbolizing that the story might be connected to this place. What could the connection be? Well, you will figure that out when you watch the movie.
This movie was great. Hutcherson and Rubio portrayed the characters amazingly, perfectly showcasing a relationship between two siblings: messy yet adorable. As Hutcherson’s character meets friendly yet mysterious cop Vanessa (Elizabeth Lail), the actress is very talented and we see a different side of her from the character she played previously, as everyone knows, the romantic Beck in the Netflix hit series “You.”
About the storyline, plot, and CGI effects, I enjoyed them honestly. I believe the jump scares were less gory than the videogame itself, and the animatronics were exactly like the ones we saw on the videogame. It does give an eerie vibe, but it’s great for 13-year-old kids who watched light-horror movies before (I hate horror movies, so this seemed like a breath of fresh air to me).
I highly recommend it for those who were previous fans of the videogame or the storyline in the past. A fun fact that might intrigue you is that people on TikTok keep speculating about the videogame itself. They think it was created based on the story of the disappearances of five kids at a Chuck-E-Cheese pizzeria in the ’90s, which is what made me want to watch this movie in the first place…to be able to confirm the theory. To conclude, this movie was entertaining yet kind of frightening for people who have never watched horror movies.