So, I’ve never actually played Five Nights at Freddy’s…well, that’s not entirely true. I’ve played some of the game. A couple of minutes, before I ended up dying. But my oldest nibling really likes the game and the lore…and when I realised they were making a movie of it, I was immediately interested in seeing that. No one should find my desire a surprise if they know me, considering that horror is my bread and butter movie genre.
I did find it really easy to relate to Mike almost straight away. While it wasn’t clear what had happened to his parents and what resulted in him having to be the guardian of his little sister Abby, it was immediately clear that he was struggling with the guilt from his brother’s disappearance, and the fact that his life was now spent trying to find out what had happened to Garrett made him a really sympathetic character.
I really didn’t like Aunt Jane, which was probably supposed to happen in the movie. She was quite obviously meant to be a villain…and her lawyer’s actions made me stretch my suspension of disbelief, especially when he stayed and listened to her hiring people to try and mess up Mike’s life. Yes, I find ghost kids possessing anatromic robots more realistic than a lawyer ignoring his client breaking the law by hiring a group of young people to vandalise her nephew’s place of work.
For a lot of the movie, I wasn’t entirely sure what to make of Vanessa’s character. At first, I thought she was a police officer who just happened to have Freddy’s on her patrol route. As the movie went on, however, it became obvious that she knew a lot more than she was saying. And I did enjoy her interactions with Mike, especially as she was clearly quite sympathetic to his problems and attempts to figure out what had happened to his brother.
I thought there were some really good elements of foreshadowing in this movie…and one thing that I thought worked really well was the fact that, although there were elements of horror and violence, there wasn’t a lot of gore shown. I’ve mentioned before that I think a lot of horror movies are made by people who forget that less is more…and I was really happy to see that was utilised in this movie.
I mentioned above that I haven’t actually played much of the games this movie is based on, but my oldest nibling did tell me there were a lot of good easter eggs included…and they enjoyed the movie. So did I, despite being less familiar with the games. So if you’re on the fence about seeing this movie, whether you’ve played the games or not, I would definitely recommend seeing this if you enjoy horror movies!
Ink of Blood 