Five Nights at Freddy's

"Five Nights at Freddy's (2023)" (henceforth referred to as "FNAF" in the review) walks a fine line, but still manages to entertain. I want to get one of the most common critiques of this movie squared away before I get into it; no, FNAF is not scary, because it *couldn't* be. The main demographic of the FNAF franchise are young children. This makes it not impossible, but a terrible business move to make it R-rated. Firstly, parents would be outraged (despite the fact that it's entirely on them which movie they bring their children to watch). Kids would also use any method they could to watch it despite such a rating. These reasons would create a lot of bad press for the movie, causing it to lose sales. With that, the final and probably main reason it doesn't have a higher age rating is that the movie would lose a ton of potential sales by excluding its largest demographic. Aiming for a "medium" age rating like PG-13 subjects the film to limitations in terms of how violent and scary it can be, but Universal (rightly in my opinion) deemed it necessary to maximize viewership. I was fully aware of this being the case when I went to watch the film, and while I would have loved to see an R-rated version of FNAF, I completely understand the reasoning behind it not being so. That is the foundation I'm writing this review on. FNAF is both cheesy and silly, but finds time to ground itself. The cinematography is average, but the props are excellent. They follow the source material very well and look sufficiently realistic. The writing and acting are the main things stopping FNAF from completely surpassing my expectations. Sometimes these factors make the film stumble. I find the most redeeming quality of FNAF is its entertainment value. I had so much fun watching it, especially with my friends, who were both able to provide important context for the lore, and provide lots of laughs at the most bizarre parts. I'm only a passive enjoyer of the source material in that I've watched some people play the games on YouTube and the like. Without any prior context I think this film might be a miss for most people, because it can be hard to follow the reasoning for certain characters decisions without understanding the lore behind the franchise first. On the other hand, I think it was appropriate to go this route as many if not most of the viewers will likely be familiar with the source material, and going the other way might leave them disappointed instead. I couldn't imagine the challenge of abiding to all the necessary limitations of making this film, and I have a lot of respect for the crew for doing what they did with what they could. It could be a lot better, even with these limitations, but it surpassed my expectations well.