Long story short, I want to start this out by making a bold statement… the Five Nights at Freddy’s movie is much better than the critics are stating. Not only is it better than the critics claim, but I believe that it’s a top three movie this year along with Barbie and Oppenheimer. Having a $78M opening weekend is certainly a statement.

To understand why this is a top three movie this year, you have to understand all the lore behind the making of this movie, and why it took eight full years to finally come to fruition. It took that long because time and time again, studios producing the movie were changed, and scripts were changed so many times. Giving it a low review on Rotten Tomatoes is totally unjustified if you don’t know the true story behind it all. https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/five_nights_at_freddys

But I think we can finally give an honest review on this horror flick now that it’s finally released. The starting scene I did not particularly like and thought it was somewhat slow. Although I can understand the background behind why they chose this specific opening. Without spoiling too much, the opening is below average.

Moving forward from that opening, the movie starts to really take off and begins setting the stage for what Mike and Abby can expect from having a job at Freddy’s. Even though these scenes don’t really connect too directly with the game’s lore, they definitely serve as scene-setters for what’s about to come later on in the movie. Overall, I think it’s solid that Scott Cawthon tried to include a scene-setting part for the non-initiated into the world of Freddy’s.

After that, the movie starts to get even more strange and unique in a way. Vanessa (the police officer) teams up with Mike after he has trouble at his job with strange visions. I think these scenes connect with the lore well, because in the game, there is a minigame that helps it connect with the game’s lore. The movie does a solid job of tying its’ scenes into the lore. https://gamerant.com/five-nights-at-freddys-lore-explained-william-afton-animatronics/

But it gets even better than that, next comes the twists and turns that almost nobody was expecting from this movie. Not only do these twists and turns in the next scenes add to the movie, but I think Scott does a really good job here giving us a visual to add onto what happened in the game’s lore. He does that several times throughout the movie, and if you take a closer look at it, you can tell he wanted to do exactly that. These twists will keep you interested in the movie.

Several characters that Blumhouse wanted in the movie also make an appearance, which is a nice touch. People that connect to the lore and talk about the lore should absolutely be included in the shooting of this movie. It’s a nice touch for the community, at least I feel like.

Overall, I think Scott and Blumhouse do a really good job connecting the lore of the game to the movie. And not only do they do that, but at some points they add onto the lore, making theorists like Game Theory have something entirely new to cover about the game. Sure, you could make the argument that it’s not scary enough, but you must keep in mind the fact that this is a PG-13 rated movie. Meaning that it’s mostly kids and young teens as the audience Blumhouse is trying to appeal to. They may not be able to add scary jump scares or gory scenes, but they’ve done a good job working with what they were given. The production crew of this movie, and Freddy’s fans alike have good reason to be proud of this movie.