What Went Wrong With The FNAF Movie | FNAF Movie Review
Welcome, one and all, to a review of the FNAF Movie. Let me get this out the way immediately; this review will be with spoilers so if you haven’t seen it yet, please don’t watch further Alright, so this movie sure is…a movie that exists. To get the verdict out of the way, I liked the movie. 3 out of 5 is what I’d grade it. However, it’s very flawed, and most comes from the conceptual side of production. Consider some hot takes incoming. The costumes are fantastic and the set-design were perfect; it captured the mood and atmosphere of
the game, visualizing this old abandoned pizzeria. It’s very clearly FNAF instead of just any abandoned old restaurant. Clearly a lot of time, effort and care went into establishing the materialization of the movie. CGI fitted in well and didn’t feel off. Camera-work was well done and cinematography generally good. On technical and film making-levels, this movie was great. I liked the plot of the kids contacting Mike in his dreams to try to persuade and influence him, as he’s so hyper-focused on getting his little brother back that he forgets his sister. He blames himself. He seems to act
out of instinct and assumes the worst of any child in potential danger as he’s deathly afraid of it happening again. His mental suffering is expressed through much
and just doesn’t answer. The jumpscares, as FNAF is famous for in the games, were meek and spread out. Jumpscares are usually very sudden and in-your-face, most jumpscares in the movie had a lot of build-up and were expected, the only effective one generally is the Foxy kid jumpscare. When it comes to the Horror classification of the movie, the horror itself felt spread out and disjointed. Where in one sequence it focused on the scares and impending doom, the other its wholesome with uplifting montage music to boot and some gags. This is what I mean with this movie
living in the purgatory of horror. The main offender in this regard, and controversial, is the fort-building scene. It shows the human or child-aspects of the animatronics essences, as they are still children at their core but merely misled and manipulated by an outside force. The purpose is clear and fits to humanize the animatronics, what it also does is absolutely ruin any sense of horror or mystery. For example, I feel like having a scene instead where an animatronic stops in their killing-stride and zones-out while looking at a kid’s drawing could be a more subtle yet still effective
way to showcase their hidden-beneath-the-surface humanity. To give an example by comparing; I’d like to explain another movie that suffered from this exact issue; This is a Dutch movie about a week in the Dutch city of ‘Sneek’; with parties, events and more in the general theme of sailing. This movie, about this ‘sneekweek’ event, is also a slasher-horror. But the first 3/4th of the movie it’s more of an epic parties, drinking, and all that stuff-type of movie with sporadic tense moments sprinkled between the epic partying, eventually turning into a slasher plot at the end. This movie had
no idea what it wanted to be. I understood the basic idea of an usually nice, fun activity week turning dark but by showing the epic parties and only fully focusing on the slasher-part at the end, it tonally shifted so much it became confusing to keep track of and for it to be horror and tense throughout. The Five Nights At Freddy’s Movie suffered under this same principle. As said, I understand why they did the less-horrory scenes, but it focused on it too much. The main attraction of the pizzeria and this movie itself are the animatronic characters
based on barnyard animals we’re all familiar with. In the games and books, these are depicted as complete possessed murderbots with extraordinary strength and weight. In this movie their strongest weapons are looking angry in critical moments and that cupcake. This cupcake is the most active member of this gang and does the most damage. Compared to the other actual animatronics; who mostly idle like video game characters or their killing-acts are implied. I would’ve loved to see them use their large and especially heavy frames to, for example, crush their victims or fling furniture. The main villain of the
story is the franchise’s somehow-immortal killer; ‘William Afton’. Mr. Purple Guy himself. The build-up to his reveal and entrance to the finale was poor. Ironically, the retro video-gamey intro-montage is ALL the build-up we will get. I believe a live-action depiction of his killing spree would have done a much better job setting up his villainy, introducing the Springbonnie suit and perhaps have shown a motivation. But more about that in a bit. I missed references and scenarios usually found from the game. Power-out Toreador March Freddy, no spookiness on the security cameras, no use of the doors for security
and keeping the animatronics out, no Freddy nose honk, how dare they and some missed opportunities for Foxy to run across the hallway. Although not vital, those aspects were telltale hallmarks that put FNAF1 on the map. Those, and Markiplier of course. What was likely a choice to maintain the PG-13 rating and save up on money, was often cutting away from interesting shots or kills. Although understandable, it irked me wrong as the movie often felt like it wanted to show those interesting things due to the setups and suspense but cut away to a whole different scene. What
you get then, is unfortunately disappointment. To put in perspective, let’s say you’re watching the new SAW movie, right and when the trap goes off, it cuts away to ‘the next day’. Or if you’re watching a soccer match and it cuts to ads before a goal might be scored. It destroys tension and results of the build-up towards it. The cast is generally a good choice. Josh Hutcherson was a good choice for the main character, his acting was fine but likely limited to the script. The kid actors did a great job, especially Piper Rubio for Abby. Kid
actors are hard to come by. Elizabeth Lail as Vanessa was arguably one of the weaker roles, despite having at least some personality and a personal connection to the Freddy’s. Glad to see she got out of Joe’s box. Vanessa serves this classic role of exposition-dump machine to tell backstory to Mike and therefore the audience, however it’s always just not enough to give clarity. To give some reasons to the madness but keep it just vague enough, even though what she doesn’t tell could’ve really helped Mike and Abby. I can understand the situation being traumatic to her, but
that’s no excuse to not warn Mike given she clearly wants to help. She also does this 180-turn; in one scene she gleefully joins in on building that fort with the killer animatronics together with Abby actively encouraging bonding with the robots, yet in the next scene she turns moody and threatens Mike if he brings Abby back to Freddy’s again. Would’ve been really helpful if she would’ve told more so we can understand her predicament. Also she gets stabbed by Afton; her father. Who doesn’t like respond to her falling to the ground perhaps dead by his own hand.
His daughter possibly dead by own hands seems a mere minor inconvenience to him, he almost just doesn’t react, instead being far more emotionally invested with Abby putting the new drawing up. You could say Afton is a psychopath and has no empathy but it’s still his child he raised, she’s not adopted either given his line about temper tantrums. She shot him, yeah, but if she was truly intent on crippling/killing him she likely would’ve hit somewhere vital or even his head. He’s in no way hampered by the gunshot afterwards. I don’t know what to make of this.
Mike’s motivation to find a job at Freddy’s is his inability to find a fitting job long-term, and is accelerated by his aunt’s want to gain custody over his younger sister Abby. The role of the aunt doesn’t play too much of a role and is honestly redundant. I think a setting of a struggling older brother trying to make ends meet for himself and his younger sister would be sufficient enough. The aunt’s motivation to gain custody is flimsy at best, and doesn’t serve a critical purpose to advance the plot meaningfully In the end, there’s no conclusion or
resolution about this situation. About that; did everyone forget this antagonistic aunt was killed by Golden Freddy? After she’s killed, it seems the writing team and the entire world forgot about her. What would happen if the dead body of the aunt was found in Mike’s house? Mike would likely be held accountable and be separated from his younger sister whom he fought hard for to save from Afton’s clutches. Next time we’re in Mike’s house, they don’t address it at all. Is the corpse still there? Did Mike chop her up or bury the body? Her corpse was last
seen in the living room, f*cking dead! So the aunt is a redundant motivating factor for Mike to get a job faster and accept the offer for Freddy’s quicker and to give motivation for the raiding party, also somewhat unnecessary given Afton’s line of Freddy’s often already having break-ins or homeless. In the end she is killed and literally nobody cares If you, hypothetically, remove the aunt plot from the entire story, you don’t really lose much. The principle of ‘Chekov’s Gun’, don’t address it, if it doesn’t serve a purpose in your story. Also the lawyer actor is absolutely
based, best performance in the movie. Afton’s presence in the movie is minimal. The movie spends no time giving any form of motivation or reason behind his killings other than himself being objectively comically evil. He’s practically a faceless force of evil for the sake of being evil, he’s like a Marvel villain. There’s no need to spend much of the movie’s runtime to provide an elaborate backstory, but at least give hints to what caused him to do the abhorrent things he did. Only in the last sequence wherein he finally reveals himself does he truly speak plainly and
give some vague hints behind his reasonings and thought-processes. Furthermore, he’s of no influence in the plot. One could argue we’ll see that elaborated in the sequels, but the general audience shouldn’t need to do homework to understand the funny killer man in the yellow bunny suit, a movie should be self-sufficient, wherein major plot points are addressed and reasons given to facilitate. Sequels should continue and elaborate, to expand further based on the first installment. Look at any first movie in a sequel line of more famous franchises, none require you to do homework or leave you with major
questions about character motivations. Hell, even the first FNAF game was created in that sense! giving basic reasoning in the phone calls and more closer hints in those newspaper articles. It’s clear this movie was written and created with sequels in mind to further explain and elaborate the motivations and reasonings of characters, and given its box office success, that will happen mostly due to you know funny singing bear and not necessarily its conceptual strength. Speaking of Afton, his final act and death are very inconsistent and to be honest downright confusing. I can see his control over the
animatronics using the drawings as that’s a major theme in the movie, but in no way does he protect this absolute vital tool of controlling them. The springlocks activating only after cupcake bites his abdomen is a bit odd since before that happened he was shot by a gun and even before that a taser connects, which sends electrical charge through the recipient, if anything would prompt the springlocks to work it would be a sudden electrical surge. But hey, what do I know, I’m no Henry. The springlocks activating and impale him prompt only grunts of discomfort In any
depiction of Afton’s death, it’s shown to be very painful and bloody, yet here it seems more of a discomfort. You could argue he’s more resistant to pain but honestly, being impaled by cold metal suddenly across your entire body would prompt a more gruesome response from anyone, I wonder wh—ooooh Additionally, his Marvel one-liner of ‘I always come back’ felt so out of place. It was obviously written as a reference for fans to understand but it doesn’t fit in the context of the entire movie, after which he puts on the mask that is currently actively killing him.
It’s so goofy. Right. So… So what’s the use and function of the Freddy Mask Saw thing? Like the previous point, it’s not hinted at or elaborated at all. It seems like a trailer tool or purely for shock value, I honestly think someone on the writing team watched too many Saw movies. What happened to stuffing people in suits, because this is obviously not how the kids died. Do victim faces have to be mauled? Do they have multiple ones laying around in case one is actually used? Do the animatronics do this, or Afton? You see, a simple
extra shot of Afton watching with maybe a sadistic grin would’ve satisfied at least some basic reasoning. maybe he enjoys this display of gore. But there’s no reasoning behind it other than to shock the audience. Right, I see, we’ll likely know in the sequel. And that’s basically what the movie is to me, it’s a setup for a sequel to elaborate and explain the things we saw in this movie further. With the direction it took, it came across more as a high-budget fan film unfortunately. It’s a lot of criticism I gave, however that doesn’t mean I hate
the movie or think it’s bad. I think there were some rushed or poor conceptual choices that had the potential to be great. It’s clear to me a lot of love and labor went into creating this movie, and I do appreciate all the time and effort that went into creating it. Making movies takes a lot of time and man hours. It’s a good movie, with potential to be better. This movie, if anything, is a love letter to the fans of the series that has been ongoing for 9 years. …wait, 9 years? Are you kidding me? God
I’m old… Thank you very much for watching, I hope you enjoyed this review and my extremely hot takes. Let me know if you agree or disagree, or don’t if you don’t feel like it at all. I hope to see you around in further video’s!
