Five Nights at Freddy’s – non­sen­si­cal robo-slash­er trash

While at a press screen­ing of Emma Tammi’s Five Nights at Freddy’s, dur­ing one of the many, many scenes of Josh Hutch­er­son slumped over look­ing very glum, I noticed a fel­low audi­ence mem­ber lean over to the girl sit­ting next to him, point up at the screen and whis­per into her ear, ​“That’s trau­ma.” Hot on the heels of New York, Lon­don, Paris and Tokyo, trau­ma is now its own char­ac­ter, and here it’s used as a way to imbue a paper thin hor­ror con­ceit with a bit of emo­tion­al heft. 

Which was not what the ear­ly trail­ers sug­gest­ed. The film was being sold as a short, sharp cav­al­cade of nos­tal­gic fun set under vin­tage games arcade light­ing and in the musty fug of an expired fast food out­let. The Fred­dy of the title is a malev­o­lent ani­ma­tron­ic ted­dy bear who fronts a band of sim­i­lar­ly-built wood­land cud­dlies who are intent on butcher­ing any­one who enters onto the premis­es of their long-shut­tered fam­i­ly restaurant.

Although based on a strange­ly pop­u­lar tween-focused videogame series from the ear­ly ​’10s, these wired-for-sound crit­ters also appear to be inspired by the real-life robot­ic band The Rock Afire Explo­sion from the defunct mini-chain, Show­Biz Piz­za. One thing that lets the film down instant­ly is the excep­tion­al­ly poor crea­ture design, with no real feel for what makes these robot­ic beings seem so inher­ent­ly creepy. Every mem­ber of The Rock Afire Explo­sion looks ter­ri­fy­ing, and not once did any of their mem­bers dis­play a yen for murder.

Oth­er­wise, the film falls flat due to the fact that it’s a tonal dis­as­ter zone. It’s like pay­ing entry to a fun­fair only to find out you’ve wan­dered into an open coun­selling ses­sion which is being led by a slip­shod col­lege under­grad­u­ate. Plot holes the size of extra-large piz­za-pies abound as Hucherson’s angu­lar burnout Mike takes a job as night secu­ri­ty guard at Fred­dy Fazbear’s Piz­za (no men­tion of the time­frame!) in a bid to retain cus­tody of his younger sis­ter (and sole liv­ing fam­i­ly mem­ber), Abby (Piper Rubio).

Yet Mike suf­fers from the inter­nal scars of wit­ness­ing his younger broth­er being abduct­ed from a fam­i­ly camp­ing hol­i­day, but is chan­nelling his mem­o­ry of the event through dreams, con­vinced he can solve the mys­tery by sim­ply nod­ding off. And watch­ing this film, you total­ly under­stand his desire for sleep, as direc­tor Tam­mi and the writ­ing team fore­ground lots of bar­gain base­ment child abduc­tion shenani­gans ripped off from sto­ries like Stephen King’s It…, while you’re gnaw­ing at your knuck­les won­der­ing when the killer robots will actu­al­ly get to do some­thing interesting.

As an agile pro­duc­tion out­fit, Blum­house punch­es out hor­ror quick­ies fast, cheap and in mas­sive quan­ti­ties. On the evi­dence of the woe­ful­ly bad Five Nights at Freddy’s, brand loy­al­ty has reached a piv­ot point where the need to pro­duce a qual­i­ty – or even pass­ably coher­ent – work has been under­cut by the knowl­edge that enough peo­ple will blind­ly turn out to make the num­bers work. Peo­ple com­plain that Hol­ly­wood has cut its ties with mid-bud­get qual­i­ty film­mak­ing, and dreck like this is the rea­son why. 

And at time of writ­ing, there’s much ker­fuf­fle among the film criterati regard­ing the sup­pos­ed­ly inflat­ed run­time of the new Mar­tin Scors­ese pic­ture, Killers of the Flower Moon. At an unnec­es­sar­i­ly epic 1 hour and 49 min­utes, the thrill-neu­tral Five Nights at Freddy’s makes Marty’s lacon­ic opus feel like a Daffy Duck car­toon by com­par­i­son. With very few scares, no finesse, a dull set­ting, delu­sions of child psy­chol­o­gy grandeur, end­less poe-faced expo­si­tion­al back-and-forths, and all the nar­ra­tive sophis­ti­ca­tion of a par­tic­u­lar­ly bad episode of Scoo­by Doo, this one is a big, dumb, cyn­i­cal miss.