After nine mainline video games, six spin offs, and a book trilogy, the “Five Nights at Freddy’s” franchise finally got a live action film adaptation.
“Five Nights at Freddy’s”, commonly referred to as FNaF, is a horror video game franchise created in 2014. The first title revolves around a night shift security guard, Mike Schmidt, that works at a pizza parlor called Freddy Fazbear’s pizza. Schmidt monitors the four animatronic mascots, Freddy Fazbear, Chica the Chicken, Bonnie the Bunny, and Funtime Foxy, that roam around via security cameras, and must avoid their detection. If he does not stay hidden until 6 .a.m., he is brutally stuffed into a spare animatronic suit.
The film took most of its inspiration from the first game title and was a box office hit, setting a new record for best opening weekend for the horror movie production company, Blumhouse. Despite negative reception from critics, the film is sitting at an audience score of 88% on Rotten Tomatoes and received a lot of love from fans on the Internet.
USC students voiced their thoughts on the film and why it, and the rest of the franchise, became so popular. Freshmen John Flores and Erika Martinez attributed the success of the film to the FNaF fanbase largely consisting of younger kids.
John Flores: I know my own nephews and nieces and siblings that are younger than me love that stuff. But, also I would say because it’s a big meme too, like FNAF and not just like the games are old, definitely, but people deny them because it means like you see them all over, they they pop up over and over and over again in the Internet’s ecosystem.
Erika Martinez: Most of the people watching the movie have been fans since, like, they were small, like, really small like since the game came out. And I feel like that kind of kept people in, especially since like people have been waiting for the movie.
We also spoke to middle school and high school students in the greater Los Angeles area, who had largely positive things to say about the movie. They described it as a “gory, fun time” with “interesting practical effects” and “fun jumpscares”. Junior Gray Vasquez, a long time fan of the franchise, attributed the film’s success to the franchise’s position as an iconic part of the Internet.
Gray Vasquez: I feel like in its own really weird way. Five Nights at Freddy’s is kind of a cultural icon and a lot of people grew up just at least knowing about it or like watching videos on YouTube about like the lure behind it because it’s very convoluted and very in-depth for no good reason. people are showing out in swarms for this movie because to them it means a lot, which I think is really funny because it’s five nights at Freddy’s.
Not all audience reception was glowing. Senior Corey Lee stated that he was very mixed on the movie overall.
Corey Lee: I thought the script was kind of basic and cliché, and it was marketed as a horror movie, but it wasn’t particularly scary. And I’m a very scared person. I watched a lot of horror movies. I get scared super easily, but with this one, not as much.
Although traditional horror film fans are not as enthralled with the movie, the large box office numbers are indicative of both a dedicated fanbase and satisfaction amongst the FNaF community.
For Annenberg Media, I’m Aditya Thiyag.