Thrills and frights make up many people’s favorite games and the horror genre has only grown in popularity as games are released. There are subcategories under the umbrella topic of horror games, but one of the largest is survival horror games where the player must stay alive and survive through the events unfolding in the game. Since 2014 when it was released, this game revolutionized the way that survival horror games were made and played. Five Nights at Freddy’s was released in early August 2014 and has since then continued its long series of survival horror point-and-click games. The creation of this game is the cause of many similar games, including the multitudes of games created by fans.
One of the largest reasons the Five Nights at Freddy’s franchise has continued to rule the horror genre is its deep and confusing lore. Since the first game, fans noticed that there was a storyline to all the games, simply waiting to be pieced together. Fans believe the game follows a man named William Afton and his slow descent into insanity as he creates animatronics from the souls of the children he’s killed. Many fans also believe that the security guard that the player plays is Michael Afton, William’s son, who has come to stop his father from tormenting the animatronics and set their souls free. It is a very confusing story, as well as a long one to learn. Due to the lengthiness of the lore, there is a YouTube video that will do a good job of explaining just what Five Nights at Freddy’s, or FNAF, is all about. Just to note, most of the lore that fans consider to be canon, or widely known to be official. The creator of Five Nights at Freddy’s, Scott Cawthon, has neither agreed nor disagreed with any of the popular fan theories, so what the real lore is will remain unknown for the time being.
For around eight years now, fans have been waiting patiently for FNAF to be turned into a movie. Back in 2015, Warner Bros. announced that they would be turning the game into a feature film. This eventually got hindered due to a multitude of reasons such as staff, funding, and spoilers being released. Finally, fans have been rewarded for their patience with the cinematic masterpiece known as Five Nights at Freddy’s. Due to this long wait, many people have been expecting a movie true to the original lore that fans have mapped out over the franchise’s life. This movie ended up causing an unexpected divide between fans, some loving it, others hating it, claiming it wasn’t accurate to the games.
WARNING! This does contain spoilers. Do not read if you want to be surprised.
The movie begins with Michael Schmidt, a mall security guard down on his luck. Schmidt accidentally assaulted a father, whom he mistook for a kidnapper, causing him to be fired from his job and seek help from Steve Raglan. Raglan offers Schmidt a job as a security guard at an abandoned pizza place, Freddy Fazbear’s Pizza. Even though Schmidt has no desire to work there, he must get a job and maintain it to fend off his aunt, who is trying to gain custody of his sister with the motive of monthly checks from the state. Reluctantly, Schmidt accepts the offer and begins to spend nights at Freddy’s while his sister, Abby, stays home with a babysitter. On his first night, he meets Vanessa, a sweet police officer who has a history with the pizzeria. They meet and Schmidt discusses his recurring dream of his brother, Garrett, when he got kidnapped, where he revisits every night to collect details on how to find him. On his second night there, he has the same dream but confronts one of the five kids who randomly appear, only to wake up after being attacked.
Jane, the aunt with a malicious motive, hires people to trash Freddy’s, making it seem like Schmidt is slacking on the job. Unbeknownst to the intruders, Freddy’s is home to five haunted animatronics, Freddy, Foxy, Chica, Mr. Cupcake, and Bonnie, who slaughter the intruders. Unable to contact his babysitter, Schmidt is forced to take Abby with him to the pizzeria, only on the condition that she stays in the security office and sleeps. Schmidt proceeds to fall asleep, trying to uncover any more details about his brother’s kidnapping. He wakes to Abby screaming, only to find her being tickled by the animatronics. He comes to realize that the kids he sees in his dreams are the souls of the murdered children who also inhabit the animatronics, who are constantly talking about the “yellow rabbit”. Vanessa finds them, realizes Schmidt’s intention of finding his brother’s kidnapper, and warns him to never bring Abby back to Freddy’s again. Schmidt gets Jane to babysit Abby and goes back to the pizzeria, overdosing on sleeping pills so that he can uncover more details from the souls of the children. The children in the dream tell Schmidt that he can stay with Garrett forever as long as they can have Abby. Before he thinks, Schmidt agrees to the offer, only to regret it and deny it repeatedly. Schmidt begins to get attacked by the children in the dream, waking up to Vanessa treating his wounds. Vanessa confesses to being William Afton’s daughter, a serial killer who murdered Garrett and the five kids at the pizzeria who possess the animatronics.
Realizing William’s plan, Mike arrives at the pizzeria with the necessary tools to save his sister, who is being led by Chica to the backrooms of the pizzeria to turn Abby into an animatronic. Mike gets to Abby, only to be attacked by Mr. Cupcake and separated from her. After some help from an unexpected Vanessa, Schmidt and Abby are safe. That is before Steve Raglan arrives in his yellow bunny spring lock suit and reactivates the animatronics. Raglan reveals that he is William Afton before knocking Mike unconscious. Understanding that the animatronics need to know the truth, Abby communicates the truth with them the only way they will understand. She draws a picture of a yellow rabbit killing the five children and shines a light on it, showing them that William is not their friend, but their killer. Mr. Cupcake ends up biting off part of Afton’s suit, triggering the spring lock mechanism and fatally wounding Afton. The animatronics drag William to the back of the pizzeria and Schmidt escapes with Vanessa and Abby. The credits roll, only to be ended off with a voice known as the Puppets from the games spelling out “Come find me.”
Now this movie was a whole shock to everyone who went to see it. While watching it, everyone at my theater was gasping, yelling, and cheering at certain parts of the movie due to the shock that it was a real movie. It has been teased and hinted at being produced with no actual set release date for a little over eight years, making people believe that a FNAF movie was likely to never happen. This resulted in the audience freaking out and reacting with such heightened emotions due to the intense excitement that this was seriously real. It was such an enjoyable experience with the people in the theater, who clearly knew a lot about FNAF to be making references to many different games and reacting accordingly to specific scenes meant for long-time fans. It was a wonderfully crafted story as well, though many people would disagree. I thought that it was different from the theorized lore of the game, while also paying a certain homage to it by changing it slightly and branching off of it. It changes Mike’s character and backstory by turning him into an outsider instead of Afton’s son, as well as Vanessa’s character and backstory, who was originally a security guard at the Pizzplex in the most recent game. These changes in the characters and overall backstory caused many fans to react negatively to the storyline, complaining that it wasn’t like the theorized one at all. All I have to say is that the movie’s storyline has been created and approved by the creator of the franchise, Scott Cawthon, while the theorized storyline was created by a bunch of people online. I was excited to see that the storyline was different from the games, mainly because I wanted something new and shocking to experience about the game and be surprised by plot turns instead of already knowing them. As well as that, it also gives us a whole new world to explore with the very obvious hidden lore bits throughout the movie. Many different scenes eluded to some sort of deeper meaning, possibly hinting at a sequel or new lore. I thought it was a really enjoyable movie that I would recommend and rewatch.
