Five Nights at Freddy's Review

“Have you met them yet?” – Vanessa

After the crashing disappointment of The Marvels, the back-up plan came into effect. Steve and I had booked a double bill, and it was time for Five Nights at Freddy’s. A film I knew next to absolutely nothing about, other than it was based in one of those abandoned pizza places they used to have in America with amusements etc, and the animatronic cartoon characters came to life with bad intentions on their minds. It’s based on a video game, and frankly – I hadn’t heard of that either. On seeing the trailer, I assumed it was pretty much in the same vein (yes, I intended that pun) as The Banana Splits movie a couple of years ago, where the group are actually robots who become homicidal when they learn their show is being cancelled. (It’s one of the craziest films I’ve ever seen and I’m going to have to take another look at it and write it up for the site.) But back to the point…

What led me to this, other than Steve booking the tickets, was that it’s a Blumhouse production – and Blumhouse is a production company whose output I’ll go and see purely because it’s a Blumhouse production. Blumhouse are the most consistent horror specialists around today. They’re the Hammer or Amicus of our time – and believe me, that’s high praise. The other factor was Matthew Lillard back in a horror movie. Lillard had become one of the most memorable horror stars of the nineties after his legendary performance as Stu in the first Scream movie. It’s been far too long since we saw Lillard in full blown meltdown mode.

The film centres around luckless Mike (Josh Hutcherson) who is not only looking after his younger sister Abby (Piper Rubio) who is largely uncommunicative, but is also having to fight off Social Service threats to hand over custody of Abby to an estranged aunt, who only wants the monthly custodial payments. As if that isn’t bad enough, Mike is fired from his security job at a shopping mall for beating the crap out of a negligent father he mistakes for a child abductor. It should be noted as well that as a child, Mike was witness to his own kid brother Garrett being abducted, and he was never found, nor was the kidnapper. In short, Mike’s life sucks, and is about to get worse.

The only job he’s offered in his desperation by his career counsellor Steve Raglan (Matthew Lillard) is as a night watchman at the abandoned pizza/entertainment arcade, Freddy Fazbear’s. This place was shut down when kids began to go missing several years ago, but the owner can’t bear to have the place pulled down so it’s just there in a state of decay with the life-size animatronics of the various characters still around. It’s a creepy looking joint, but if all you have to do is sit at a bank of monitors, making sure nobody breaks in to trash the place and you’re so down on your luck you have to take what you can get, what’s a guy to do?

Our clue is right at the beginning of the film, where we see what has happened to the previous night watchman – in trying to escape from something we can’t see, he is caught and strapped to a device that shreds his face. (Uh oh)

Amusement arcades are not my favourite places. The bright flashing lights, the constant jingling, beeping, they get on my nerves really quickly. They’re pretty much my idea of hell on Earth. In the dark, they’re eerie. And when the animatronics start moving of their own accord, I’d be out of there as if my ass was on fire. But Mike has taken the job, and his first night goes pretty much without incident. So far, so good. On the second, he meets local cop Vanessa (Elizabeth Lail, who I last saw in the superb Countdown a few years ago) who tells him the story about all the kids who have gone missing, and who reputedly are still haunting the place.

From there, the plot thickens like a good pizza topping, as the aunt deviously accelerates her plans to have custody of Abby while the animatronics at Freddy’s have their own plans involving Abby.

I mentioned earlier that it’s been a while since we saw Matthew Lillard in full over the top flow on the big screen, well it was worth the wait. Nobody does bat crap crazy like Lillard. Even when he’s playing it straight and even, there’s an undercurrent of menacing hysteria.

All in all, this – the one I thought might be the weaker of our double bill – more than saved the day. It IS, in a way, kind of reminiscent of that Banana Splits movie, but with an added supernatural twist that again, I found refreshingly original, with the emphasis more on atmosphere than gore.

Rob Rating = 8