REVIEW: ‘Five Nights at Freddy’s’ squanders fun concept

It’s a tale as old as time, or at least as old as the early 90s. A concept works quite well as a video game, but doesn’t quite translate well to film.

The latest example is “Five Nights at Freddy’s,” a horror game franchise with a lot of popularity that has been made into a movie. The film stars Josh Hutcherson as Mike, who has to spend his nights at Freddy’s, a defunct brand similar to Chuck E Cheese, known for its animatronic mascots.

His stay there is out of desperation, as the security guard role at the dilapidated family restaurant is the only job he can get, and he needs it to continue being a guardian to his sister Abby (Piper Rubio). As Mike soon learns, working at the property can be rather creepy, as it has a dark history that lives on through the seemingly shut down animatronic animals.

With the track record that video game-based movies have, it was hard to expect a new horror classic with “Five Nights.” But what was completely unexpected was for the experience to be such a bore. The film is a slog throughout its 109 minute runtime, never offering anything besides a poor story and mild-at-best scares.

The five night format should be an opportunity for a steady build-up of suspense and thrills before a grand scary finale. This was something the filmmakers of the original “Paranormal Activity” employed to great success, as each night passing put a viewer more and more on edge.

But with “Freddy’s,” the filmmakers make modest use of an eerie setting and don’t properly pace the fear factor. This is mostly due to the filmmakers putting more effort in telling a convoluted story instead of creating a straightforward, but effective thriller. The added lore might satisfy fans of the game, but it comes across as messy and overwritten.

The scenario should be simple. Mike needs the job to secure custody of his sister and it’s all he can get, then the place turns out to be haunted. Fine. But the movie adds a lot of detail about who’s haunting Freddy’s, Mike’s late brother potentially being connected, and his sister becoming entangled in the situation.

There are two issues with this. One, the dynamic between Mike and his sister just isn’t written all that well, meaning that there’s not much of an emotional core there to make this aspect compelling.

Secondly, it takes away from the horror element and puts more attention toward weak melodrama. The horror aspect is also lessened by Abby’s interactions with the animatronics, which feel very PG, like they belong more in a “Goosebumps” episode for kids than a mature scary feature.

That leads to another issue, the film not using the animatronics to their full potential. This is a film that would have benefited from some R-rated carnage, but at PG-13, the kills are all very tame. The animatronics look well enough, but they’re not that threatening since they don’t lead to much mayhem.

“Five Nights at Freddy’s” provides a creepy setting and perhaps some fans of the game can get some enjoyment seeing this brought to life. Unfortunately, the writing is rough, the characters are forgettable and there’s simply not much to offer fans looking for a scare or memorable kills. 1.5 out of 5.