fnaf movie review

fnaf movie review

Analyzing the Cultural Impact of the Five Nights at Freddy’s Movie: A Critical Review

1. Introduction to Five Nights at Freddy’s (FNAF) and its Fanbase

Amid the rapid scaling of the individual franchise, a feature film development phenomenon stands out as the crown of the small studio sector. Nearly all franchise elements were initially released to its fanbase (including 3D models of heroes and villains, environments, action and scares, Easter eggs, and hidden narrative clues) months before general solicitations to production. Rumors or official information about the film project informed fan participation and cultivated an understanding of FNAF as a film. Meanwhile, FNAF fans have long demanded access to different media and virtually expressed their take on the property in animated films, photo-realistic graphics projects, hardcore web series, and music videos (among myriad fictional expressions). These primary, derivative visual fan works and social media uploads are easily consumed and distributed. The production model present in these film-centered fan communities is one where fandom influences the consumer audience, the representatives of fans, individual productions, and the product itself. Although the fan-driven formation of a film project has never proven success, they contributed to shaping the production outcome in a new way. In contrast, since it directly acknowledges the origin and adaptability of FNAF, film development maintains a dialogic relationship with this massive fanbase in a relatively unique instance. This advocacy is rare given the collective fan interpretations of other intellectual properties. FNAF proved to be worth appreciating, arWarning that FNAF is rich in meaning and community features. The position of the FNAF property is worth exploring for the interdisciplinary benefits of various sources. The site is evidence that the incorporation of diverse communities and available perspectives into media production can facilitate unique adaptations. It recommends the instantiation of fan-shaped material analysis.

In 2014, an independent point-and-click horror video game called Five Nights at Freddy’s (FNAF) became an unsuspecting fan favorite to audiences both inside and outside the gaming community. The cult following and popularity of the FNAF franchise have yielded unique promotional and marketing efforts, including substantial visual and fictional narrative work before the announcement, release, or even early stages of film development: a multimodal commercial exploitation of FNAF’s popularity potential. The development of the FNAF cinematic adaptation has been informed as much by this active and dedicated following as it has been by Scott Cawthon, the property’s creator. The franchise, its humor, its depictions of horror, lunacy, and non-hegemonic character design, its express fan base, and the emergence of educated and entertaining fan works all represent a specific community-forming bent. In this fan community, we can examine tensions exacerbated by charged media questions with broader implications for media studies and design. For example, how can mainstream content projects entangle in grassroots engagement with vast and varied fan communities, especially those characterized by big business? Official folklore and characterization have been sporadically fleshed out through a series of games and multimodal dispersion before most characters or narratives have been explored on the screen. The franchise consists of seven unique adventure games titled Five Nights at Freddy, three spin-off video games, a selection of books, a collection of stories, and animated short films.

2. Adaptation of FNAF into a Movie: Expectations and Challenges

Challenges can be found not only conceptually and linked to the desired quality of the product, but also in questions linked to how the full translation of the original product to this new transmedia form is going to occur. There are questions that involve the condensing of many hours of immersion experience into a two-hour video, but other ones that involve the game plot and narrative nature itself. What does readapting mean for the director and script? Which horror and urban legends are the closest ones to the real world, or are the most talked about on the internet, so the global audience gets to empathize with the characters, recognizing horror archetypes visible in pop culture such as killer clowns, zombies, or ghost children? Can the game artist’s representation of these characters and supernatural abilities be easily seen in a real-life people interpretation, with the more or less factual qualities of a realistic scenario? How can the sensitivity of some cultural aspects of a specific plot be addressed, if they are fundamentally attached to it, in a mass media form that requires high visual interpretations, spaces, or characters, and is responsible for ideological impact on the audience?

When it was announced that the successful, but also controversial, video game series about cursed robots that haunt a specific pizzeria was going to be adapted into a movie, it was a surprise to many people. After all, other similar projects had been started and none of them were completed. Since the game developer himself, Scott Cawthon, was to be the producer of the movie, it gave new hope to the audience that waited with anticipation for rough sketches of the characters on red carpet ceremonies, news and leaks on the internet, and a teaser of the movie. But with the appearance of the official trailer, reviews and other things online (and offline), and the lack of news updates from the creators, some doubts started to emerge. Knowing the history of transpositions from books to movies, the armageddon that has been the rabbit hole of video game adaptations to movies, and the immense force that the game series has on the internet, in many realities it would be a challenge impossible to overcome.

3. Cinematic Elements and Storytelling in the FNAF Movie

Good horror relies on more than a few tricks to make people jump in their seats; it relies on emotion and playing with the perspective of the viewer. The FNAF movie does a great job at pulling you into the movie world, creating a great perspective to help further drive the fear it uses. Tent poles that franchises such as Halloween and Friday the 13th have leaned on are building out these large, interconnected series. Those interconnects are incredibly time-consuming to canonize and aren’t easily managed by all creators. Despite the extensive universe Scott has made a conscious effort to whittle down and really develop a cinematically interesting core. As stated earlier, the movie starts in a pretty exhausted place: the haunted house, but adds a pre-show of sorts to the viewing experience, letting us know the government is about to nuke the place to stop the danger. The interconnectivity trick, despite often being a shortcut for substance, is effective at pulling people deeper into the experience. Who wouldn’t want to only see Goldfinger after seeing Dr. No?

4. Character Development and Representation in the FNAF Movie

If this is the case, the movie has to cleverly stage the animatronics in a way that doesn’t trivialize the danger of the creatures, or pander to fans’ expectations without offering any freshness and innovation. In this way, the movie does indeed begin to share an interesting dichotomy – it needs to be gripping and thrilling enough to keep potential jump-scare-averse moviegoers interested, while sustaining the interest of those who are bored by the overplaying of animatronics in modern horror movies. But speaking of sustainment, how long can we expect the appeal of animatronics to last once the initial surge of viewership has passed? Additionally, how many times does an animatronic need to jump out towards a character with the screeching tone of a silent-parade whistle before the audience becomes indifferent to this ploy?

One of the biggest challenges facing the team adapting Five Nights at Freddy’s into a movie is how they will make the game’s characters relatable. Animatronics can be scary for a multitude of reasons, and when up against the concept of life-sized robot bunnies and bears, it can be difficult to weave together compelling character development. It appears that in the Five Nights at Freddy’s movie, the story will be told through the lens of estranged grown-up siblings who must come together and face what they once feared most in order to save their estranged parent who has become embroiled in the haunting happenings of the restaurant.

5. Conclusion: The Future of FNAF in Cinema and Popular Culture

Indeed, as we are seeing with several documentaries, exhibitions and retrospectives that are being carried out around the world, video games are finally obtaining a social value in dictionaries of culture. Increasingly subjects, in general, are being presented to the general public by their speculative potential, and the industry is assuming this as a form of expression, even entertainment for young and old. Five Nights at Freddy’s, as a blockbuster movie, would be concretely projecting it to another level of understanding and awareness; stop being a set of entertaining reflections for its target audience and transform it into an element for the collective imagination in general.

As the Five Nights at Freddy’s film enters production, it will not be the first time the series has expanded its reach beyond the original video game format. Its sequels have developed the narrative beyond the original format, and it has a wide variety of licensed merchandise – from children’s toys to an in-production AR game similar to the phenomenon of Pokémon Go. However, potentially becoming part of the 1% of games adapted into film may be what solidifies the series in popular culture henceforth. The series’ family-friendly nature doesn’t immediately establish the game’s importance in terms of cultural impact, but the fact that it becomes part of a game culture that is still largely met with contempt does. For better or worse, it’ll possibly be the first game of this type that is more easily associated with gaming history by consumers.