Fear the Bear: Five Nights at Freddy’s Movie Review

A movie analysis and review (which includes spoilers) of the highly anticipated “Five Nights at Freddy’s” movie, produced by Blumhouse Productions. 

By Cecilia Rodriguez

Five Nights at Freddy’s, by Scott Cawthon, is a loved video game franchise that initially came out in 2014. Its take on horror immediately launched it into immense fame and popularity. 

With its gained popularity, it was no wonder why Blumhouse Productions jumped at the chance to claim production rights in 2020. 

The production for the Five Nights at Freddy’s movie was a long awaited one. It started development in 2015 under Warner Brother Studios, however, the final story was not ready yet, and Cawthon couldn’t settle on a script.

They ended up dropping the movie, and Blumhouse Productions decided to take over. They started filming in February 2023 and ended filming in April of 2023. 

The movie stars Josh Hutcherson from the well known movie franchise, “Hunger Games” as Michael Schmidt, Matthew Lillard from “Scream” as Steve Raglan/William Afton, and Elizabeth Lail from “You” as Vanessa Shelly. 

The movie in the beginning, seems very slow and dragging. We learn about Michael Schmidt, a man in his mid to late twenties and about his younger sister named Abby, who is around 10 years old.

Aunt Jane is a side character, who is known for trying to take Abby away from Michael. Her parts in the movie were, in my opinion, pointless. She was a problem for a fourth of the movie and then was forgettable.

The movie starts off with Michael beating up a dad at his security guard job at the mall because he thought the dad’s kid was being kidnapped. This was due to his past trauma since his younger brother get kidnapped when he was younger.

He gets fired but ends up getting offered a night shift as a security guard at Freddy Fazbear’s Pizza, which we find out was heavily popular in the 80’s by Steve Raglan, who is secretly William Afton, the man who created Freddy Fazbear’s Pizza.

This was a big change of lore from the canon games, in which Michael Schmidt is also Michael Afton, William’s son. They made Michael Schmidt a complete separate character from Michael Afton.

Vanessa’s role also changed from the games. In the games, she’s the security guard at the Pizzaplex and a tester for Help Wanted, but in the movies, she’s apparently also the security guard at the original location.

I, personally, disliked this because many other fans and I anticipated seeing the exact canon lore that was in the games in the movie, but it seemed as if all the lore from the books, games, and spin offs were mixed into one.

The movie continues and he takes the job and hires a babysitter for Abby, Maxine a.k.a Max, who we later find out is one of the people who is helping Jane with trying to gain ownership of Abby.

The middle to end is when it gets interesting. Aunt Jane convinces the people helping her to trash Freddy Fazbear’s Pizza.

This leads to one of the most gruesome death scenes I have ever seen in a PG-13 movie. Maxine gets led into a room by one of the possessed kids and to put in a nutshell, she got half of her body torn off by Freddy.

This is honestly what I was expecting the rest of the movie to be like, since a big part of the games is the disturbing backstory.

To sum it up, all of Aunt Jane’s accomplices die to the main four animatronics, and all in very grotesque ways. 

To be honest, the Aunt Jane plot point seemed unnecessary in my opinion. It felt like it was just filler and they just added plots to say they added plots.

Needless to say, Michael returns back to the pizzeria the rest of the nights and sleeps during the shifts, to see if he remembers any details that could help him find his brother, which spoiler alert, was killed by Steve Raglan.

Through these dreams, he manages to connect to the kids who possess the animatronics.

A big part of the movie I’ve seen people talk about is the infamous pillow fort scene, where Abby, Vanessa, Michael, and the animatronics make a fort in the pizzeria.

When I first watched this scene, I was incredibly confused because it’s supposed to be a horror movie, not a happy go-lucky movie. I truly was not expecting the animatronics to randomly be nice. 

After watching it again, I believe the animatronics did this in order to manipulate the humans into thinking that they’re not bloodthirsty robots looking to kill. Regardless, I still think it’s odd.

Later in the movie, the possessed kids tell Michael that he will get back his little brother if he gives them Abby. Michael, out of missing his brother, says yes and immediately regrets it and pleads that they need to leave her alone.

The dynamic between Abby and Michael is a pure one, it’s definitely my favorite dynamic in the movie apart from Chica and Bonnie, who were absolutely ruthless. Michael cares for Abby so much that he gave up the one person he wanted to bring back incredibly badly, his younger brother.

At the end of the movie, it’s revealed that William Afton murdered Michael’s younger brother and that William is Vanessa’s father.

That plot twist was completely unexpected. I was still confused about whether or not he was related to Michael, since that’s how it’s like in the games, but obviously that’s not the case.

However, I still have mixed feelings on how I feel about it. I liked that they added the plot twist because it truly was unanticipated, but removing the part where William is Michael’s dad is iffy to me, since it’s a really big part of the original storyline.

The movie ends with William stabbing Vanessa after she tries to help Michael and Abby escape the pizzeria. Fortunately, we did get a springlock death scene of William Afton.

In my honest opinion, it could’ve been executed much better. It felt rushed, and the iconic “I always come back” line didn’t hit as hard as it should have. This is disappointing because this is the scene most people had high expectations for.

Abby absolutely destroys the mindset that the kids had for William by drawing a picture representing how William killed them in the 80’s. This was never in the games, but I actually really like this outcome because of how funny it is. All they had to do was draw a picture and the animatronics were suddenly against William.

Overall, I recommend the movie for longtime fans of the franchise. It has a lot of secret easter eggs, like the “It’s me” on the mirror in the security office, the dog animatronic in the backstage which could be a reference to Sparky or Fetch, and a possible Puppet sneak peak behind Chica on the stage.

All in all, if you’re looking for a horror movie that isn’t entirely horror, then “Five Night’s at Freddy’s” would be a perfect watch for you.

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