The FNAF franchise has been outside Planet Virtua's scope. This is mostly because those games just aren't the #1 horror games when it comes to interest. Yes, the lore is vast and interesting and the game itself is interesting in its gameplay mechanics. However, getting jumpscared every five minutes and building anxiety through cameras and impending doom just seems stressful over a long period of time. This didn't stop me from watching playthroughs and getting some good commentary thanks to Youtubers. Spoiler Alert for the FNAF movie.
I'd taken enough of Five Nights at Freddy's in order to be considered the FNAF movie demographic. The results of this movie's opening scenes are obviously more of a horror movie setup for our character to get the job of the security guard you play as in the game. This didn't bode particularly well because then there came the contrived plot involving his child who is also going to the pizzaria with the scary mechanical mascots.
The first image we see in this movie is Freddy's brigade of mascots killing off a security guard. Now we get to see how they go after the child. Well, it turns out that these mascots are all children reincarnated, and the security guard has been having dreams about these particular children. Why this is happening is also quite contrived but they at least make an attempt to make it make sense. This man's brother was kidnapped when he was a kid, and somehow he is forcing himself to relive the same dream for ten years. Yes, it gets worse.
So, these mascots are kids in spirit, so they end up connecting with the child and the father just kind of goes along with it. We see these animatronics kill other people, especially some strange sideplot where the man's ex-wife is trying to get him fired, so some people come and try and sabotage the entire pizza place. We know they're dangerous, but I suppose the father doesn't really know that.
There are just so many horribly built story elements in this movie and the worst part is that they take the scare factor out of Freddy and his gang. We see entirely too much of them and they stop being scary after we see them chum about with the kid. There's something about some drawings being linked to their connection to being controlled by Springtrap, who turns out to be the guy who hired the security guard. Did I say contrived? I meant fated by the gods.
So, the guy who hired the security guard turns out to be the man who kidnapped his brother. He also happens to be the guy who made the animatronics murderous in the first place. He kidnapped kids and put their souls into these robots. This whole time, these kids were speaking to the security guard in his dreams because they were kidnapped by the same guy as his brother. They didn't think this story through on several elements. They overthought the areas where they should have thought less and vice versa. They could have come up with a more stable plot than this. Thinking that a guy can relive the same dream over and over for so many years is just beyond suspension of disbelief. The stars align a few too many times for the taste of the story. The Freddy and crew kills are somewhat entertaining, but they are just not menacing enough to be considered scary at all.
This movie has some good points in it. Matthew Lillard is good as the hiring manager, and there are some good scary scenes here and there. It's just a problem of too much exposure to the so-called scary entities. If they could make it more geared toward actual scares and maybe get out of the PG-13 comfort zone, it could be done. Why they decided to do away with the blood is a conundrum for a franchise that has such an obviously more mature demographic. This movie isn't terrible, but it certainly didn't impress FNAF fans. Even as a normal horror movie, it fails to turn any heads.
This article begins the Virtua Month of Ghostly SPOOOOOOOOOOOOKIES! Happy October, everyone! Get ready for an entire month of Halloween Mayhem!
