The Five Nights At Freddy’s Film is Disappointing and Here’s Why

What Could Have Been Great Is Pulled Down By Questionable Storytelling

WARNING: SPOILERS AHEAD, LIKE MAJOR SPOILERS. I CAN’T NOT SPOIL THE MOVIE AND DISSECT THIS STORY THE WAY IT DESERVES.

I didn’t interact with the Five Nights at Freddy’s games until this year. I had played a demo of Five Nights at Freddy’s 2 back in the day but didn’t latch on like some fans did. It wasn’t until my wife began watching YouTube videos of playthroughs and reading the books that I started to gain interest.

I loved watching these games. They were truly scary and forced a player into the action for some of the most immersive gameplay I’ve ever seen. I’d always heard that there was a lot of “lore” behind these games, so I dived in in preparation for the upcoming Five Nights at Freddy’s film.

It was here that my enthusiasm began to wane. My reading of Five Nights at Freddy’s: The Silver Eyes was a mixed bag. I didn’t think the book was particularly well-crafted, but there were some interesting ideas. I thought I surely must be missing something, for why would some many people love digging into this story?

After viewing Spaceman Scott’s video essay FNaF & Undertale: How to/NOT to Tell a Story, it clicked that my understanding wasn’t the problem, it was how the story was designed and developed.

https://youtu.be/mIInuZP9_Kw?si=l03S_xGmrBEldqd3

So that was highly disappointing, but I thought “a big film studio investing millions of dollars won’t let this happen to their product, right?” The film would have to be better simply because there were more people invested in delivering something of quality. Regardless of the game’s story issues, I was excited for the movie.

But I was wrong again.

What’s sad is that the Five Nights at Freddy’s movie had the pieces to be good, but the pieces were assembled with silly putty instead of glue.

Banking on the Sequels

Mathew Lillard let it slip in January of this year that he signed a three-movie deal for Five Nights at Freddy’s. So, the sequels seem likely to be made.

However, unlike most films, where the success of the first generates a sequel, this movie seems to assume that the sequels are happening and that the audience is going to watch them. This decision gives the film’s story a kind of “we’ll get to it later” attitude to everything. I believe that a lot of the problems I will discuss largely stem from here.

The whole film feels incomplete, while at the same time like the various unresolved parts are intentional. The writers demonstrate that they knew how to construct a good story, but for some reason, they didn’t. This careless nature says to me that it’s expected a viewer will see the sequels automatically.

This isn’t a new problem to Five Nights at Freddy’s as ambiguity disguised as complex storytelling has long been series creator Scott Cawthon’s bread and butter. But this isn’t good practice and certainly shouldn’t be for a major film. This first installment should have been able to stand on its own and leave the audience satisfied at the end. Then, maybe, they would want to see another one.

If one keeps this idea in the back of their head, it’s easy to see why this film suffered. The film’s ability to establish ideas, follow through and develop anything, and extract meaning from its plot all fall short of its potential because of it.

Establishing Ideas

Any good story will show the audience the rules of its world so that when they become important later, it feels natural. Five Nights at Freddy’s has a lot of difficulty setting the stage for its rules early on.

One example of this is when Abby (played by Piper Rubio), the little sister of Freddy’s new security guard, Mike, reveals to the animatronics that they’d been killed by the yellow rabbit, William Afton (played by Matthew Lillard). In the beginning, the movie briefly discusses how important pictures are to children as a form of communication, but then doesn’t lay the blueprint for how this works for Freddy, Bonnie, Chica, and Foxy.

Abby explains to her brother Mike that they “like pictures” but it isn’t clear what effect pictures have for them. Freddy flattens his hand to take the picture, then looks at it, and that’s about it. There’s no notable change when they are presented with Abby’s drawing. The big reveal that pictures got through and caused them to turn on Afton is less impactful because the audience isn’t shown why or how it works.

The biggest failure in establishing ideas is William Afton’s presentation. The character is present for five minutes in the beginning and then isn’t present again for over an hour. His ending scenes at the restaurant really insist that some important things happened, that just didn’t.

Afton says to Vanessa, his daughter, “we both know you won’t” before she shoots him in the chest, but we actually don’t know that. The relationship between these two hasn’t been established. They don’t interact in the film and the exposition given only explains their familial relationship.

He also claims that Vanessa was meant to keep Mike in the dark or kill him if needed, but again, nothing in the narrative clearly demonstrates this to be true. Nothing she does feels like a foil or a betrayal to Mike.

The real kicker is when Afton delivers the line “I always come back”. This line has zero context in the film, but plenty of context to fans of the games, and is functionally meaningless. A new viewer of Freddy or someone taking the film on its own terms has no idea what this line means. It appears in this moment and nowhere else, not even in the background.

What makes all of this more frustrating is that the film’s writers show they know how to do this. They show the animatronics acting weird in the first half when the electricity goes haywire and Mike later uses electricity to incapacitate them.

The writers also knew that they needed to show the danger of these haunted robots, so they crafted the break-in scene with Max’s brother and his friends. This gives the audience context on how violent Freddy and his friends could be since the opening is purposefully vague.

It should be apparent that the writers know the importance of establishing ideas for the world to make sense. They either didn’t care about certain parts or as I argue, they are counting on a sequel.

This lack of a foundation gets worse when one looks at how the film follows through on the things it does establish.

Following Through Plot Points and Character Arcs

Five Nights at Freddy’s has so many dangling threads that a seamstress would be ashamed. Some are small and don’t alter the story too much like “was Mike and Abby’s aunt actually dead or sleeping when the Fredbear/Golden Freddy child visited”.

Some of these threads have major ramifications for these characters and make their arcs feel unjustified

Abby

Mike’s little sister begins the film an antisocial, drawing-obsessed child who has an openly hostile relationship with her brother. Her only friends are the ones she imagines. In the end, she is playing with other children and seems happier.

But why?

Partially, this confusion is because the audience doesn’t know much about her. They don’t know how long she’s been taken care of by Mike, what her parents died from, when they died, or if her isolation is self-imposed or ostracization by her peers.

In Abby’s first scenes, she’s just drawing by herself. The audience doesn’t see her attempt to play with kids, or even shoo them away when they try to interact. We don’t anything about this situation and the story never follows up on this beginning.

The film tries to sell a compelling story of a kid finding her confidence through acceptance of her odd imagination, but doesn’t clearly show that. If Abby had been trying to make friends, but couldn’t, then her growth from playing with Freddy and the other animatronics would have been a natural progression.

Instead, the audience is given a sudden shift in character with no justification in the epilogue. The writers simply didn’t follow through on the ideas they set up or tried to sell.

Vanessa

The daughter of William Afton could have easily had a complete, fulfilling arc, but as she stands,
Vanessa is a boring character who simply fills a need that the plot demands.

Vanessa’s role in the story is the woman on the inside. She knows everything about Freddy’s and gives Mike breadcrumbs when the story requires them. But, if one based their perceptions of Vanessa based solely on the end, a different, confusing interpretation could occur.

Her final confrontation with her father suggests that she was in cahoots with him and meant to be steering Mike away from the secrets of Freddy’s. Afton even claims “you may have forgotten your loyalties” at one point, reinforcing this. Nothing she does in the story suggests this to be true.

Vanessa drops little nuggets of information without much resistance. She flippantly mentions the restaurant string of children disappearing and Mike doesn’t have to work hard, if at all, to get more information from her. She’s not a foil, but a confidant in the story, so why did the ending suggest the former? Why didn’t the writers follow through on the latter?

Like with Abby, the audience isn’t shown enough of Vanessa’s past or relationship with Afton to make either of these roles work. We don’t know why she hasn’t told anyone about her murderous father until now or why she might have been helping him work against Mike.

A single scene with her and Afton could have done so much to flesh out her motivations and follow through on her being a friend or foe. The movie wants there to be a betrayal, but doesn’t build on where she began to satisfy that desire. More information in either direction would have made Vanessa an interesting character, but she sadly seems to only be a plot device.

Afton

When Mike and Afton (disguised as Steve Raglin) first meet, there’s a moment of recognition when Raglin starts to read Mike’s last name. I like this scene writing-wise as it could be easily missed if you aren’t paying attention and signals right away that there’s some history between these two.

Unfortunately, the audience will never know why.

Though I like this setup, it’s never explained why “Schmidt” rings a bell for Afton. That last name is in the top 200 most common names and the film suggests it’s been a decade since Afton killed Mike’s little brother, Garrett. There’s nothing to grasp onto as an explanation for why this exceedingly generic name causes him to pause.

It only gets worse from here. When Afton appears donning the yellow rabbit suit and attacks Mike, he admits to killing his brother and claims it will be “symmetry” to kill him as well, but again, we never know why. The writers simply didn’t allow this setup to go anywhere.

It’s a travesty that the villain, the mastermind behind everything, in this film is treated like most of the characters and has so little backstory. There are two only things that a viewer could gather at this moment: that Afton worked at Freddy’s at one time because of Vanessa’s picture with him in costume while the restaurant was open, and that he “made” the haunted animatronics (but if that means he built the robots or just made them haunted is still a mystery).

I suspect this is intentional because there will be sequels. Five Nights at Freddy’s posits multiple times that Afton can control the animatronics somehow and he claims that the ghost children within told him about Abby. I’m sure a future film will reveal in some way that Garrett is either communicating to Afton as a ghost or possibly in an unseen animatronic.

But this isn’t good writing and wastes an excellent setup. For anyone not familiar with the franchise — and some who are — this is a huge letdown. It’s even more of a letdown when one examines Mike’s storyline and sees that a satisfying arc does exist, but that is better discussed in the next section.

Making Things Meaningful

Five Nights at Freddy’s features a recurring line, first spoken by Mike and later by Vanessa. In both instances, William Afton says something like “you have only one job”, lists multiple tasks and then the characters respond “that’s two things”.

Vanessa’s repetition occurs right before she is stabbed by her father and is framed as a big moment. The camera focuses on her face when it’s said and happens at a very dramatic moment in the final scenes.

But why was this line important? What did it mean? What did it show about William Afton that he can’t seem to list the appropriate number of things?

This line is demonstrative of another problem with Five Nights at Freddy’s storytelling. It can’t seem to effectively draw meaning out of its themes and ideas.

Pictures as Communication

As I briefly discussed, pictures are an important motif in the film. They are set up to be important because of their power in communication with children. A line from the school’s counselor (or doctor I suppose since that’s what Mike’s aunt confusingly calls her) lays this out well:

“You know, pictures hold tremendous power for children. Before we learn to speak, images are the most important tool we have for understanding the world around us.”

Sadly, the power of this tool isn’t shown well through either Abby or Freddy and the gang. Pictures end up being what turns the animatronics against Afton, but before that, there’s little for the audience to chew on this idea.

If something more specific than “they like pictures” had been given — maybe the Afton’s hold on Freddy breaks ever so slightly because of a picture or the group acts out of character when presented with one that reminds them of something — this idea could have been incredibly meaningful. If Mike had discovered some hidden message in Abby’s pictures (but as I’ll show later, Mike doesn’t discover anything) this alone would have made the theme better executed.

The Truth Inside Us

In the film, Mike revisits the same dream of his brother’s kidnapping because he believes he can eventually unlock the identity of Garrett’s kidnapper. If he finds something different just one time, he’ll have some clue and can know the truth.

Mike’s insistence is based on a book about dreams. He explains to Vanessa that it theorizes:

“[…] we can’t forget things. Basically, it says everything you see, your entire life, down to the tiniest details gets stored inside you. You just have to know how to look.”

This is an interesting idea and ties well with the animatronics. The truth is physically inside of them in the form of the ghost children’s bodies. Afton stored them inside these robots because no one would think to look there. Freddy also sings “Talking in Your Sleep” by the Romantics which reinforces this idea.

“all your dreams that you keep inside/ You’re telling me the secrets/ That you just can’t hide”.

But this theme never becomes meaningful because Mike never figures out “how to look” and he doesn’t find the children’s bodies inside Freddy and friends. He’s told about his brother and the bodies’ locations by Vanessa.

This theme is presented multiple times like it’s important, but never explored. We’ll in the next theme, that is also couldn’t be addressed without contradicting Five Nights at Freddy’s strongest theme.

Obsession Will Destroy You

The film’s tackling of obsession is truly a travesty as it is the biggest example of the writers’ ability to successfully do everything I’ve been criticizing. Mike’s story arc is well-established, follows through on that establishment, and has something deeper to say about it.

Mike’s trauma has made him hypervigilant. He brutally beats a father who he mistakes as a child kidnapper and it is shown to cause him to repeatedly lose jobs. This is why he explores his dreams so fervently, but never changes how he goes about it. He is obsessed to the point of harm.

When his dream finally changes, he easily gives up Abby to the ghost children because he needs to find the answers and possibly bring Garrett back in some way. Almost immediately, he regrets his decision and realizes he’s about to repeat his past.

When he finds Abby at the restaurant, he apologizes for everything and promises to be a better brother. This story is extremely satisfying and feels like it has some meat to chew on, even if it’s well-treaded territory. When it’s paired with the other themes though, its effectiveness is dragged down.

Mike’s obsession arc only works because he doesn’t do anything different. The resolution is a direct result of his actions and that’s why it works. If he had figured out “how to look” or discovered anything on his own, it would have been a contradiction; his obsession would have possibly been affirmed.

The obsession theme and the “truth is inside you” theme are deeply at odds with one another. One has to question why these two things were included when they don’t work well together.

And to a degree, the obsession theme is hammered too much. While it is a compelling story, Mike doesn’t seem to have a ton of autonomy in the story. Every answer from his brother to the mystery behind Freddy Fazbear’s Pizza is given to him. He doesn’t discover anything, even things that wouldn’t have contradicted his character growth.

This theme is so close to being great, but can never reach the level it should because of everything surrounding it.

Conclusion

While the Five Nights at Freddy’s movie should have been a fresh take on the series, it seems to be another notch in the poor storytelling that plagues the entire franchise. It’s truly a shame because there’s a lot of good in this film.

The restaurant was a visually stunning set and it was easy to be immersed in the juxtaposition of colorful, happy arcade aesthetics with the eerie desolation of it all. It was also small enough that everything could be included without feeling cramped.

Freddy, Bonnie, Chica, and Foxy look incredible and that they were puppets designed by Jim Henson’s company and operated by multiple people is a huge win for practical effects. They could have easily been CGI, but I think they would have lost a lot of charm and authenticity.

Matthew Lillard and Josh Hucherson also deliver good performances. Lillard seems born to play William Afton and his little character quirks melt into everything. Hucherson is pulled on my heartstrings when his character realizes he’s going to lose his sister. Stunning acting all around.

The story drags all of Five Nights at Freddy’s down to an average film. Things could be fixed in the next few films, but that is a gargantuan task and unfortunately unprecedented in Scott Cawthon’s work. I fully expect the sequels to barrel through without changing much, but I’ll happily admit it if I’m proven wrong.

If there’s any lesson here, it’s that some problems can’t be fixed by changing mediums and throwing more money at them. The only way to fix a shaky foundation is to start over and make one that’s more solid. And those who reinforce these issues have to accept their limitations and step back, otherwise, Five Nights at Freddy’s will be just another video game movie.