While by no means a new trend, recently there has been, it seems, a heavy focus of directors and producers trying to push the envelope, bringing games that should stay games into the movie realm. Enter “Five Nights at Freddy’s” specifically, the latest in a long line of video game adaptations and yet another video game brought into the real world. Despite the few rare examples that have grown to be way better than expected, it still shows that these games should stay as games.
“Five Nights at Freddy’s,” although decent for what it is, doesn’t do a great job of pulling the viewer into the world, which the games have done and continue to do for so many. The primary issue here is the difficulty of taking a first-person game and shifting it to movie form. As one quote from a ReelViews critic by the name of James Berardinelli stated, “I was more bored than scared.”
Despite being a hit with the younger gamer crowd, from a critics’ perspective, this movie is the lowest critic score for video game adaptations since 2016, a report from The Direct said. This means it places it firmly as a low-performing film, even worse than that of the “Warcraft” movie, released in 2016. While “Warcraft” continues to be one of the most popular MMO video games to date, coming fourth place only to that of “RuneScape,” “Final Fantasy XIV,” and the new “Baldur’s Gate III,” it didn’t bring any new users to the game or peaked interest of many more as the movie was done so poorly. FNAF specifically scored a measly 26% on Rotten Tomatoes which comes as a shock given how huge of a hit the “Super Mario Brothers” movie was, as well as “The Last of Us.”
The worst offenders to this rule are horror games, which can be rough to turn into a movie. Being in a game immerses you in a specifically formulated world while playing them, which makes the scares, the gore, and the all around world feel much more engaging for horror junkies. Consider the original “Cloverfield” movie, which featured shaky cam similar to a first person game but without the direct control. This small detail of no control is exactly why horror games are so popular! You determine how everything plays out, no one determines it for you. The thrill of getting to experience things that send you off on a journey of absolute terror, and of course being the one going through it yourself are irreplaceable by a movie screen.
On top of all of that, the movie is very clearly directed towards the younger teens that play FNAF, which explains its PG-13 rating. However, when you do this, it comes at the expense of the overall horror experience that could have been if it was Rated-R. Blumhouse Productions, the same studio that brought “Get Out” and “Hush” and even the amazing “Paranormal Activity” series have been known for the gore and psychological horror they put in their productions, but FNAF, being a lower rated movie, didn’t get the same treatment as its horror movie predecessors when it came to creating it.
I’ve been a strong supporter of the FNAF games, and loved playing all of them. But the movie just didn’t do it justice. I didn’t get the same nostalgia from playing all the games and the following series, and being a huge horror fanatic, this movie could have been done much better. Not just catering to the teen crowd, but the adult crowd that has been playing the games since the beginning.
It’s time to put the nail in the coffin on video game to movie format. It can just never replace the immersive feelings you get when you are actually playing the games. Hollywood should stick to revamping classic horror movies, and leave the horror game genre alone.
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