Editor’s Note: The following contains spoilers for Five Nights at Freddy’s.
The Big Picture
The Five Nights at Freddy’s movie adaptation tries to capture the game’s spooky atmosphere but falls short on connecting certain story elements. Mike Schmidt, played by Josh Hutcherson, faces challenges in protecting his sister from their evil aunt while working as a security guard at Freddy Fazbear’s Pizza. The Yellow Rabbit is revealed to be William Afton, the owner of the pizza place who lured and killed children and is ultimately defeated by Mike and his sister with the help of the possessed animatronics.
Fans can hug their Freddy Fazbear figures and celebrate, the Five Nights at Freddy’s movie adaptation is finally available to buy on VOD this week. It’s been nearly a decade since the original game came out and mesmerized players with simple mechanics and the deadly danger of being killed by huge animatronics in the dark. The movie does try to emulate this feeling to some extent, but fumbles when it tries to apply that to some story elements, leaving very few dots for the viewers to reflect upon later and try to connect themselves. Still, the story of Mike Schmidt (Josh Hutcherson) is indeed full of ups, downs, and turns, so let’s see what that is all about.
Five Nights at Freddy’s
Can you survive five nights? The terrifying horror game phenomenon becomes a blood-chilling cinematic event, as Blumhouse — the producer of M3GAN, The Black Phone, and The Invisible Man — brings Five Nights at Freddy’s to the big screen. The film follows a troubled security guard as he begins working at Freddy Fazbear’s Pizza. While spending his first night on the job, he realizes the night shift at Freddy’s won’t be so easy to make it through.
Release Date October 27, 2023
Director Emma Tammi
Cast Josh Hutcherson, Matthew Lillard, Elizabeth Lail, Mary Stuart Masterson
Rating PG-13
Runtime 110 minutes
Main Genre Horror
What Is ‘Five Nights at Freddy’s About?
On the second night of work as the security guard at Freddy Fazbear’s Pizza, Mike meets Vanessa (Elizabeth Lail), a cop who seems to know a lot about the place. She even shows up at his house the next day to try and get him to quit, but he can’t. He needs the job to prove in court that he can take care of and provide for his little sister Abby (Piper Rubio) and avoid her being taken away by their evil Aunt Jane (Mary Stuart Masterson). Aunt Jane is so hellbent on taking Abby away from Mike that she tries to get him fired by ordering a bunch of goons, including Abby’s babysitter Max (Kat Conner Sterling), to thrash Freddy’s, but they are all killed by the animatronics that guard the place. Those animatronics are actually possessed and hostile, commanded by the spirits of five children who died at Freddy’s in the 1980s, as Vanessa explains. She also tells Mike not to bring Abby to work with him anymore after he does so on the third night because now the animatronics want to turn Abby into one of them.
At the beginning of the third act, Mike is forced to ask Aunt Jane to babysit Abby, so he won’t take her with him to work. When he fails to show up at Freddy’s with her, the animatronics attack him and the Freddy animatronic goes to his house to get Abby, seemingly killing Aunt Jane in the process. After Mike wakes up at a police facility and is tended to by Vanessa, she explains Freddy’s is actually owned by William Afton, who killed the children in the 1980s and stuffed their bodies inside the animatronics they now possess. She also reveals electricity to be their weakness, and that she’s actually Afton’s daughter, enraging Mike, who rushes to the restaurant.
When he arrives, the final battle begins, with four of the animatronics turning against him and one taking Abby to their murder room. Mike gets to them and saves Abby thanks to his taser, and tells her that now he understands how he neglected her and promises to take better care of her from now on. This wholesome moment is interrupted when Mike is attacked by the leader of the animatronics, the Yellow Rabbit. This new animatronic suit is operated by Afton himself, and it is revealed that Afton is the career counselor (Matthew Lillard) who gave Mike the job in the first place! He taunts Mike and is only stopped by Vanessa, who does the right thing and turns on him, albeit being stabbed in the process. Afton makes the animatronics rise again, and they are only stopped when Abby tells them in a drawing that the Yellow Rabbit is the person who killed them in the past, not their friend. The animatronics turn on Afton make the springs inside his suit malfunction and dig deep into his flesh, trapping him inside forever — the same fate he gave the children.
Who Is the Yellow Rabbit?
Image Via Universal
As we’ve seen, the Yellow Rabbit is actually the owner of Freddy Fazbear’s Pizza, William Afton, but there’s more to him. In the 1980s, he used the restaurant to lure and kill children, later stuffing them in the animatronic suits their spirits would later possess. To protect himself, he made his daughter, Vanessa, become a police officer and help him by turning a blind eye to Freddy’s. She’s the officer making the rounds in that part of town, which is how she was able to keep track of what was happening and know so much about the place and its unnatural inhabitants.
Over the years, Afton kept killing the security guards dressed in his animatronic suit along with the animatronics the children possessed, which is extremely creepy. He was able to ensure a steady supply of victims by taking on the identity of Steve Raglan (which sounds an awful lot like “strangler”), a career counselor who would direct desperate people looking for jobs to Freddy’s, as he did with Mike. It’s important to notice how he stumbled when reading Mike’s profile and seeing his surname, definitely remembering what happened in Nebraska all those years ago. Later, when he confronts Mike in the third act, Afton confesses that he is the one who kidnapped young Garrett, which doesn’t make a whole lot of sense, because it’s implied that the city where the movie takes place isn’t that close to Nebraska.
Those are two explicit ties to Five Nights at Freddy’s lore. First, Afton is the antagonist known as Springtrap, who dresses as the Yellow Rabbit and is trapped by the suit’s spring locks just like he ends up in the movie. Second, he’s the real father of the main character, Mike Schmidt. This becomes clearer as the player advances in the story and moves on to the following games. In the movie, this is adapted, with Vanessa (who’s also in the games, but a completely different character) taking the role of his daughter, but if franchise plans are on the table, it’s something that can definitely become an important plot point in future installments.
What Happens at the End of ‘Five Nights at Freddy’s?
The next day, Mike and Abby are safely back home and more in sync than ever, stopping at the hospital where Vanessa lies in a coma, recovering from her stab wound. He thanks her for her help in taking down her father and promises to be there when she wakes up. Abby is also worried about her animatronic friends, but Mike optimistically promises her that something will be done about them. Back at Freddy’s, the Yellow Rabbit is rotting in anger in a storage room, while the ghost of the leader of the children (Grant Feely) stares angrily at him.
After the movie ends and the credits roll, a voice can be heard spelling “C-O-M-E-F-I-N-D-M-E.” There’s still nothing concrete about a possible sequel to Five Nights at Freddy’s, but this ominous message may be related to Garrett’s ultimate whereabouts, as he’s the only character that needs finding. The message itself probably alludes to another of the franchise’s games, Sister Location, in which it’s revealed that Freddy Fazbear’s Pizza has a sister location called Circus Baby Pizza World. Could that be a cryptic message by Garrett himself from inside an animatronic at this new restaurant? Only a sequel will tell, and going off the box office figures alone, a follow-up movie isn’t outside the realm of possibility.
Five Nights at Freddy’s is now available to purchase on VOD.
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