The Five Nights at Freddy’s movie, which opens this weekend, will either be a highlight for fans of the longtime franchise, or it could be a poorly made movie that will make fans cringe.
Five Nights at Freddy’s started as a video game in 2014, with creator Scott Cawthon designing a game loosely based on the Chuck E. Cheese restaurant chain.
The video game is about a character named Mike Schmidt, a night security guard in Freddy’s Pizzeria. On the first night, he’s bombarded with animatronic characters attempting to kill him, and he then has to survive for five nights. Players can keep track of these animatronics with security cameras.
Two more, similar video games followed. Then in Five Nights at Freddy’s Four, players instead take on the role of a child who is trying to get away from even more horrifying animatronics in his own house. FNAF Sister Location is where Mike officially dies, and his body is used as a host for Ennard, an animatronic creature.
Cawthon also has written Freddy’s books, and some musical artists have created their own, unaffiliated music related to the games or books.
Freddy’s was such an interesting game for kids who are now in high school and college because it was scary – but not so scary that parents would keep their child from playing it. The game itself only had jump scares, and the series doesn’t really show gore until around the end of FNAF 3.
With the movie opening this weekend, some fans are expecting the movie to be exactly like the games, although without the first-person perspective. People have extremely high expectations, and will likely be disappointed if it’s not exactly what they wanted.
The franchise has been ripped off before by Hollywood, in the 2021 movie Willy’s Wonderland, starring Nicholas Cage.
But Cawthon is the main writer in the Freddy’s movie, which is promising. There are also some key cameos in the movie, including CoryxKenshin, a popular YouTuber.
People expecting the gore of the later video games will be disappointed, though, because it is rated PG-13, not R. Meanwhile, the trailer implies that the animatronics will join together with Mike Schmidt to defeat Springtrap, another animatronic. But Mike hates his dad, and his dad is Springtrap.
Fans of the franchise will have to go to the movie and make up their own minds.
