The main role in Five Nights at Freddy’s Josh Hutcherson is an actor who is known for his participation in the extremely successful film Hunger Gamesseries could be confident of making the leap into Hollywood’s elite class in the mid-2010s. However, the really big roles didn’t materialize in the period that followed. Maybe simply because he always appears rather down-to-earth on screen and doesn’t have any larger-than-life charisma surrounding him. His performance in the video game adaptation is also grounded, inflicting tangible trauma on his character Mike Schmidt.
The young man has been plagued by great feelings of guilt ever since he failed to pay attention to his brother on a family trip to the woods, who was ultimately kidnapped by an unknown person. In the here and now, Mike has the guardianship of his little sister Abby (Piper Rubio), but his aunt Jane (forced into a cliché role: Mary Stuart Masterson) wants to take her away from him with all her might. After all, her nephew could not offer the girl a stable environment in which to grow up. To prove the opposite, Mike accepts a job as a night watchman, which he had recently rejected.
The location is the restaurant and entertainment center Freddy Fazbear’s Pizza, which was popular with children in the 1980s and has long since closed and should actually be razed to the ground. However, since the owner cannot yet part ways, the shed continues to rot. Mike soon notices that there is still life in the dilapidated place. When it gets dark, it’s time for the mascots to wander around and hunt down troublemakers. The animatronic animals seem to have a heart for Abby. However, the local police officer Vanessa (Elizabeth Lail), who visits regularly, knows about the danger of the strange creatures.
Five Nights at Freddy’s somehow wants everything at once – and that’s exactly why it hardly lands a hit. The serial killer motif is linked to serious grief management, which partly takes place on a dream level. Added to this is the phenomenon of obsession, chamber play horror in a discarded, often dark location and, of course, trashy murder dolls. What sounds like a moody, wild, unconventional mix turns out to be an artificially stretched affair, staged with no sense of real horror, and boring in terms of content.
Elements of the video game – such as the view of surveillance monitors – are used, but never to the extent that it is likely to pull fans out of their seats. The makers around director Emma Tammi (The Wind) not with ultimate consistency and also shy away from completely free-wheeling, even though the basic idea would actually be there.
Anyone expecting splatter fun will definitely leave the cinema disappointed. Bizarre images like a bloodthirsty cupcake that is – the facehugger Alien Greetings – falling onto the face of a defenseless victim certainly does happen. However, the film is stingy with such ideas and remains relatively tame. At the end, when the main villain is uninspiredly revealed and the first preparations for a possible sequel begin, there is one question above all: which audience should this all-and-nothing would-be shocker be tailored to.
#Nights #Freddys
