But how’s the pizza?
Directed by: Emma Tammi
Written by: Scott Cawthon, Seth Cuddeback, Emma Tammi
Cast: Josh Hutcherson, Piper Rubio, Elizabeth Lail, Matthew Lillard
Swift shot: For years I have been asking my son to explain “the story” behind Five Nights at Freddy’s or FNAF as the cool kids call it, and every time he did I would think, man, that will never make a good comprehensive movie with such a surreal, mixed bag of stories. But, I was wrong! Kudos to Blumhouse for making a solid, fun movie that fans of the franchise and total noobs can enjoy.
When I was a kid there was, of course, Chuck E. Cheese, but we also had a place called Showbiz Pizza and Mark Twain’s Riverboat Playhouse, which was a personal favorite of mine. So when my then eight-year-old son told me about FNAF and explained how it was based on a bunch of kids being murdered in one of those theme restaurants I was like, wait, what?!?
First, I was intrigued by the idea but horrified that my son was so into this thing. So, naturally, I looked more into it. But as I got further and further into it, it just confused me and made me feel old. Like, oh Hell, is this what it was like for my dad when I would explain Transformers? Yes.
So, I wasn’t expecting to be blown away or anything. I thought it might be a fairly decent movie, but credit to everyone involved for making a creepy, disturbing film that I just can’t get out of my head.
Josh Hutcherson plays Mike, the sole surviving son of a family without parents. His little sister, Abby (Rubio) is now his responsibility. But, he can barely take care of himself. With anger issues related to a childhood tragedy, he can’t hold down a job to save his life. And now Abby has started refusing to eat and spends more time with her imaginary friends than anyone else.
Meanwhile, his wicked Aunt, Jane (Mary Stuart Masterson) wants custody of Abby so she can cash in on checks from the state.
He’s fortunate to have a friend named Maxine (Kat Conner Sterling) who babysits Abby for free.
In his desperation, he reaches out to Career Counselor, Steve Raglan (Lillard) who has one last job that even he can’t mess up. It’s one job! You guessed it, night security at the now-shuttered Freddy Fazbear’s Pizzeria. He just has to go there every night and keep people out. Simple enough, if this wasn’t a Blumhouse story.
The first night Mike is on the job, he meets Vanessa (Lail) a city cop who is quite familiar with Freddy’s and offers to help him keep the place in check.
But Mike has his own agenda, he’s trying to use dream theory to uncover the missing clue to a horrible family tragedy.
And we haven’t even gotten to the killer animatronics yet!
Now that you know about all the human characters, let’s get into the killer robots. Just like Chuck E. Cheese and his friends, Freddy Fazbear has his own pals. There’s Bonnie, Chica, and Foxy the Pirate. Each puppet was hand-crafted for the film by Jim Henson’s Creature Shop – thank you very much!
And, my God do these things come alive. As the game was designed primarily as a point-and-click survival game, you constantly wonder when these freakin’ things are going to start tearing people apart. Don’t worry, they’ll get to it.
Because they used practical effects, there’s no element of disbelief associated with any of the mechanical monsters. So, you can’t escape into the, well, this isn’t real part of your brain that other horror films allow for, at times. But, that’s not to say there aren’t some major super-natural elements at play in FNAF. If you know, you know, and yea, there’s a reason Cawthon went with Blumhouse and not . . . those other guys.
I won’t spoil anything here, because I happen to think that is what makes FNAF stand out in the annals of horror. So, go see it for yourself!
I will warn that a few times I thought the movie was going to be too slow for “Generation Now” (as my mom calls kids my son’s age) or that they’d be bored with all the backstory stuff about custody and other character-developing moments. But, nope, I have it on very good authority that it was not an issue at all.
I hope these people work together again and give us a great sequel, and heck why not let M3GAN and FNAF live in the same Universe – they are both, Universal, after all. I can dream, right?
