In this day of age, it seems that horror movies have gone through a transformation, but it’s not a good one. Scary movies are becoming less and less frightening and rather more and more mind-numbing. The traditional vision of jumping from a thrilling scene with popcorn in hand while clutching onto your friend has become rare. Instead, long, boring, and dull horror films with an unengaging storyline are being released. Five Nights at Freddy’s, or commonly known as FNAF, is a great example of a terrible horror film, dragging on a seemingly unending plot of boredom and no terror.
In 2014, the video game franchise of Five Nights at Freddy’s was released and gained quite a bit of popularity. The game is known for having many nostalgic horror elements, including scary quiet buildings, creepy children’s toys, and many jump scares. For many fans, FNAF is more than just a video game—there is a huge gaming fandom for the franchise and many videos about it on platforms such as YouTube. Many of these fans were excited for the movie release, and while they may have enjoyed watching their favorite video game in the form of a film, for viewers who hadn’t played the video game, the movie was a total flop.
The root of the movie’s failure started when it was announced that the film would be family friendly and rated PG-13. Restricting the classic elements of horror and instead turning the movie into a barely terrifying film was a mistake. The PG-13 rating heavily weighed down the movie, turning it into an unentertaining and unscary film. The creepiness and scary elements of the video game that made FNAF so good, according to gamers, didn’t translate to theaters.
Typically, great horror movies always have an aspect of balance: portraying a terrifying plot while still having good humor. The FNAF movie, though, didn’t lean into its humor enough. The video games had a morbid sense of humor that also didn’t translate well, along with the scary elements. A huge aspect of the video games are the scary animatronics, but the film focused too much on the human characters. Too much time was spent on the character Mike’s backstory, time that could have been well spent creating a scarier and more terrifying background for the toys.
All in all, the main reason the Five Nights at Freddy’s movie was a flop to many is simply because it just wasn’t scary enough. Whether classified as a horror movie or a thriller, the audience should be shaking in their seats with anticipation and horridness. However, if you go to the FNAF movie, you’ll only find yourself snoozing off in your sleep, wondering why you ever chose to come.
