Five Nights at Freddy’s (FNAF), the story of murderous animatronic animals possessed by the souls of dead children , came out in theaters Oct. 27.

While FNAF- fans anxiously awaited its release, director Emma Tammi butchered the entire point of the series, relying on making a story for children rather than a frightening experience that stays true to the original concept. 

Most people probably don’t know much about Tammi, and her inexperience shows in the film. She has worked on horror films in the past, but those fall under more of an indie-style of film.  She directed “The Wind, ” about a woman who faces the harshness of untamed land on the western front; and  “Blood Moon,” about a single mother traveling with her ten-year-old looking for a fresh start on life but go through a lot of hardships to reach the destination. These films are labeled as horror, but they drastically differ from the entire concept of Five Nights At Freddy’s. 

The Five Nights at Freddy’s video game is known to be horrifying, always keeping the players on their toes trying to survive the five nights. Compared to the intensity of the game, the movie underwhelmed, especially in the gore scenes which didn’t cause jump scares. 

The movie was rated PG-13, which seems absolutely ridiculous for the intended audience of a FNAF production. The movie should have been aimed at the people who grew up with the lore. 

The plot was based off of the book but took in some of the original lore to create its own story. However, many of the scenes were corny. Although the souls of the children are bonded to the animatronics with a remnant, Tammi highlighted the concept a little bit too much with the building a fort scene. 

She also completely missed the tone mark by using the power of working together to beat the bad guy in the end. With Five Nights at Freddy’s there shouldn’t be an implicit lesson to be learned. Instead, kit should invoke horror, something that leaves a viewer shocked and left to think about it for hours after viewing. 

The scene of Freddy getting into Mike and Abby Schmids house to kill the aunt also made absolutely no sense. How did an animatronic know where her house was, walk the way there without being seen, and kill the aunt while Abby was home without her questioning it? Not to mention that Freddy got into a Taxi! It makes no sense for Freddy to leave the establishment. Scenes like that lightened the plot up a whole lot, making the movie lose its fear factor. 

The animatronics themselves looked very friendly. They didn’t have that unsettling feeling like how the games did. They were created to look friendly for the children but had an uncanny essence behind the design that unsettles viewers in the game, but in the movie they look to be made of cloth, and the animatronics just looked like big cuddly stuffed animals. 

The pacing of the movie wasn’t good either. It builds suspsense for something big to happen, yet leaves the viewer unsatisfied. When the very few jump-scares did happen, they weren’t very surprising. You could just tell when they would happen.

Another miss with the movie was how extremely underwhelming William Afton’s entrance was. He emerges from the shadows in the springtrap Bonnie suit talking in a menacing way, acting like a stereotypical villain. 

The animatronics are in an evil daze, and turn on the main characters, but snap out of it when Abby displays  a kids drawing of William hurting the children that are now tied to the animatronics with their souls.  The writers could have shown the animatronics snapping out of evil in a different way, but they use a kids drawing which was a stale concept and just seems like it was taken from a Disney movie. 

Now the ending, the springtrap scene was very disappointing. It did follow the original lore in this aspect but the acting was awful. It reminded me of a comedy in the way William’s character reacted to defeat. When the spring-traps activated, all we got was shouting and hyperventilating.  Not bone chilling screams. His lungs didn’t  puncture, and his throat didn’t burst like in the original.

All in all the movie could have gone much better, and a project like this with such a huge fan base and great expectations should have been given to a director with far more experience. I wish the plot was not based on the books but rather the games because the majority of the fan-base stems from people who grew up with the games and were excited to see the lore being played out in the film.

The FNAF movie was a solid 4/10.