'Five Nights at Freddy's' Is Light On Scares

Formulaic and limited on chills, Five Nights At Freddy's is a run-of-the-mill horror film without much gas to go on but still enough to make for an entertaining ride. The story of the protagonist is more interesting than a group of teenagers getting wiped out by someone or something evil. Having not played the game, I'd be more scared with something that's more immediately interactive. Five Nights At Freddy's, the film sticks to the familiar jump scares anyone can see coming from a mile away.

The horror is more silly than it is creepy. Freddy Fazbear's Pizza is a spooky play on Chuck E. Cheese where the animatronic fuzzy friends come to life so they can end yours. The idea certainly sounds scary but is more humorous than anything else. Luckily, the film's big reveal does make things more terrifying, if only slightly. 

Mike (Josh Hutcherson) Is a mental case screw-up. When we first meet Mike, he attacks an innocent man watching after his kid in a shopping mall. From Mike's point of view, he thought the man was abducting the child he was with. For some reason, Mike doesn't go to jail for assault. He just seems to get off scot-free. Michael's Aunt Jane (Mary Stuart Masterson) disapproves of Mike. Her cold-heartedness is piercing. as she doesn't trust Mike as far as she can spit at him. 

Unable to find employment, Mike goes to a job counselor, played humorously by Matthew Lillard. The last time Lillard was in a slasher, it was the original Scream. Steve (Lillard) assigns Mike a security guard role for an abandoned child's attraction spot. Freddy Fazbear's Pizza hasn't been used in years. Yet its original owner wants to keep it running, although it's of no use to anyone. All Mike has to do at his job is stay awake so he can make sure nobody tries to break into the place. The hours are long, and the pay is minimal, but Mike takes the job out of desperation. 

If Mike doesn't make any money, he can't care for his sister, Abby (Piper Rubio). After a traumatic family incident from his childhood, Mike was ripped away from his parents and hasn't been mentally fit ever since. Mike intentionally sleeps on his job, thinking he can rewind the outcome of the incident in some way. Unfortunately for Mike, we can't change the past even if we try to in our dreams. But can Freddy make his dream come true?

There's an entity that exists in Freddy's where all the singing fuzzy animatronics come to life. From the very first scene of the film, we see the robot animals take a victim. The opening feels a bit like Saw, where multiple security cameras are viewing the person who's being killed as if it's Jigsaw's layer. After the first kill, the movie cuts to an opening credit that hammers home the point that this film is based on a video game with 8-bit sprites of the Fazbears dancing around and killing their victims. 

The film can be a great deal of fun, even if it's all too familiar. The movie is extremely reliant on jump scares, so much so that it takes away from the horror in the movie. What makes a good jump scare work is when there's less of them. When you fill the entire movie with "BOOS!" it loses its effect. 

Take The Shining, for instance. The movie only has one big jump scare, while the rest of the film is built on the terror that is the Overlook Hotel. The hotel is scary because it revolves around the sanity of its protagonist, who is rapidly losing his mind. Five Nights at Freddy's tries to evoke similar themes but comes too short. Mike, like Jack Torrence, is mentally unstable. However, Mike isn't the threat but rather the good guy, whereas Jack is a killer. The horror in Five Nights at Freddy's revolves more around the setting than the decaying mind of the protagonist. Because of this, the movie isn't that scary but is fun. 

When the film reaches its conclusion, its scariness wears off. Although we learn of the existence and intention of the furry devils, we're not frightened by them. In fact, nothing in this movie is that scary. It's a PG-13 horror film made for a teenage audience. For that target demographic, the film does exactly what it should. Make a dynamic story centered around a video game that isn't too scary so you don't spook away the kids.

The film easily could have been a story about a bunch of horny teenagers who get killed. But it opts for something more psychological. We get into Mike's mindset, why he has to work his job, and how it relates to the entities is a clever way of implementing the video game's horror elements to the big screen. The only shortcoming is that it's made almost too safe. The way everyone stops the Fazbears in the end is ridiculous. They just have to taze them and make a drawing? Five Nights at Freddy's is only mildly creepy but wholly entertaining, where we're more invested in characters than spooky robots.