Five Nights at Freddy's movie review: A soft-horror flick sans thrills Film

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Cast: Josh Hutcherson, Elizabeth Lail, Matthew Lillard, Mary Stuart Masterson, Christian Stokes, Joseph Poliquin
Director/Writer: Emma Tammi
Rating: 2/5
Runtime: 110 mins

The "Five Nights at Freddy's" video game franchise, created by Scott Cawthon in 2014, with its strange mash of nostalgia and horror-based gameplay, became popular because it was mild enough for younger players to experience a genre without losing sleep over it. Cawthon's creation has now been brought to the big screen by Emma Tammi whose credits in addition to Direction include co-scripting with Seth Cuddeback.

Mike (Josh Hutcherson) a young man in his early twenties, plagued with anger issues, is tasked with raising his much younger sister Abby (Piper Rubio), whom his aunt, Jane (Mary Stuart Masterson) wants to take custody of. Mike is struggling to find employment and a meeting with a career counselor Steve (Matthew Lillard), nets him a job working overnight as security at Freddy Fazbear's Pizza, a kids entertainment centre that shut down a while back. The job appears boring but when he is introduced to a line-up of animatronic characters, including Freddy, all of which appears to be still functional, the night watchman role takes on a sinister slant. It doesn't take Mike long to sleep on the job and experience lucid nightmares about the abduction of his young brother Garrett (Lucas Grant) - dreams which grow more troubling and vivid while he's on the job. To add to his troubles, the pizzeria's singing animal robots sometimes come alive at night and appear to be possessed by ghosts.

Despite it's limited runtime, the film lacks pace. The narrative drags around in Mike's tale of woe before getting to the mild horror parts. A large part of the runtime is concentrated around Mike's tug-of-war with his aunt and his relationship with mysterious cop Vanessa. The intent may have been to create more intricate drama and give us enough reason to sympathise with the lead character but it just doesn't work. Director Tammi manages to create a few worthwhile moments but its all frittered away when we don't get to see any scares worthy of a horror flick.

As a video game, this aspect may have been kosher but as a horror flick it becomes wanting. We never really see what Freddy is capable of. There's no suspense to be had and the tension is slack enough to make it seem like you are watching some childish entertainer. The sound design, cinematography and production design is quite decent though.