Five Nights at Freddy’s

3 outta 5

Five Nights at Freddy’s is a strange film, and not only because it’s primarily concerned about killer animatronic mascots going on a slasher spree. The strange thing is that for a horror slasher absurdist film, it seems to be contradicting itself on what tone it wants. There’s an intense character drama about being unable to get closure, and working-class drudgery with an affecting emotional lead performance. And then there’s the killer animatronic mascot rampage story. Both have their highlights and both clash awkwardly. But the killer robot carnage freak out scenes click decently, whenever the movie gets around to it.

Mike (Josh Hutcherson) is bouncing around jobs trying to look after his little sister, Abby (Piper Rubio), and things are bleak as his Aunt Jane (Mary Stuart Masterson) is trying to take custody of Abby from him. Eventually, a career counselor, Steve (Matthew Lillard) offers Mike a night job as security at a closed down amusement restaurant, Freddy Fazbear’s Pizza. It hasn’t been open for decades due to ghoulish events, so all Mike must do is make sure nobody breaks in and keep the place clean. His only companions on the long nights are animatronic animal mascots. Arriving on site to help Mike out is the friendly police officer, Vanessa (Elizabeth Lail), who knows a lot about the history of the closed restaurant. But Mike is tortured by dreams of a childhood trauma when his younger brother went missing, and he cannot connect with his little sister who is more interested in drawing than talking to her brother/guardian. And even worse, at night the animatronic creatures come to life and kill anyone on site, be it intruder or helpless security guard. This creates a lot of problems when Mike has to bring Abby to work, and she starts to make nice with the living mascots who have an unfortunate habit of becoming homicidal at a moment’s notice.

The big disconnect is that it wants to have crazy animatronic mascot carnage but also be a story about dealing with unresolved trauma and childhood ghosts. Neither of which mesh neatly. Hutcherson mostly seems to be in working class character drama. There is a whole thing about his childhood trauma of seeing his little brother taken away in a mysterious car, never to be seen again. That scene is repeated often throughout the movie and loses a bit of impact each time. Mike says apparently everything someone has seen over the course of their lives is stored away somewhere inside of their brain, so he is repeatedly taking pills and dreaming the same moment over and over to uncover something new.

Masterson as his aunt is basically in a domestic drama about an overbearing family member that wants Abby for government cheque purposes, and Masterson plays it very nasty. There is also a fun, mean scene when Jane is discussing how to discredit Mike in front of her lawyer with the lawyer trying to escape the room and not be caught in the middle of a criminal conspiracy. Lillard as the career counselor delivers exposition about the abandoned restaurant in an interesting way, sounding overworked and overtired but trying to cut Mike a break. And Lillard also excels at some crazy bits in the movie’s finale. The helpful police officer, Vanessa, cannot stand when Mike takes Abby to the site, knowing how dangerous it is. Abby, the sister, is basically a plot piece, she likes to hang out with the animatronic animals as she finds them friendly which creates problems as they are demonic killer creatures, although her home scenes with Mike feel like domestic melodrama. There is interesting and dramatic stuff but way different from the tone of animatronic mascot chaos.

And the animatronic mascot chaos is really cool, with awesome giant sized puppetry courtesy of Jim Henson’s Creature Shop. One of the better designs is an animal that is half broken down so it’s mechanical parts are hanging out and it looks very creepy, also the creatures emote rather menacingly with bits of eye movement. The movie is rated PG-13 in the States, 14A in Ontario in one of the quirks of the rating systems, although it isn’t exactly gory. It works well enough with lots of cutting away from the carnage and muffled screams. There’s also an animal mask that is full of buzzsaws that slowly lowers onto the face of a victim strapped into a chair. There are basically three carnage bits, like the opening scene when a security guard is being stalked by the creatures. Also, one a bit in the middle where a bunch of crooks show up to get stalked and torn apart by the machines. And the finale when Mike fights against the robots while a bigger, meaner one shows up to control them has a series of bad things happening. It’s just the scare scenes with the mascots seem meager compared to how much the movie is focused on Mike’s night shift and childhood memories.

When Five Nights at Freddy’s kicks in, it can be effective as the creatures are scary. There is a lot of unexpected emotional family melodrama also but even that is decently performed. The movie may be at war with itself for what tone it wants to be, zany or emotional pathos, but it can be a decently freaky experience.