Whizbang Dustyboots
Gnometown Hero
My kids had the day off of school and I'm in danger of capping my vacation time, so I took the day off and took the kids to see this.
My kids have been playing these games since the beginning and are big into the lore around it. Lots of kid cult classic videogames nowadays have a whole world of lore and YouTube videos dissecting them. I know vast reams about FNAF (as the kids call it), Undertale and more.
While the original game (out of ten games) is basically taking the scene from Aliens where the marines are trapped in the control room and have to stop xenomorphs from getting into the room and killing them, that structure doesn't make sense in a real world pizzeria, so it's abandoned in favor of incorporating the ghost story from later FNAF games (there is a lot of lore in these).
The end result is a movie that's about as scary as a scary broadcast TV show, like the first season of Supernatural, with no on-screen gore except dead bodies after the fact. I took a 10 year old who wasn't bothered by anything in the movie -- Poltergeist, this is not.
It has a great cast -- including Matthew Lilliard in a role that will make adults with knowledge of slasher movies smile at the Easter Egg and a very mean Mary Stuart Masterson (whose character's goals are kind of dumb, but who serves as a reason for the protagonist to take and keep the terrible job working as the night guard at Freddy's). There are a number of kid actors, all of whom do a surprisingly good job.
The script is OK, with some things never addressed -- it should be obvious that something weird is going on if there's only a night time security guard, not a day time guard -- but it's smarter than most of the slasher films this is paying homage to.
Given that this is Blumhouse's most successful opening weekend ever, there's almost certainly going to be a sequel to this.
I didn't hate being dragged to this, but probably nothing an adult without a strong emotional connection to FNAF needs to seek out while it's in theaters.
My kids have been playing these games since the beginning and are big into the lore around it. Lots of kid cult classic videogames nowadays have a whole world of lore and YouTube videos dissecting them. I know vast reams about FNAF (as the kids call it), Undertale and more.
While the original game (out of ten games) is basically taking the scene from Aliens where the marines are trapped in the control room and have to stop xenomorphs from getting into the room and killing them, that structure doesn't make sense in a real world pizzeria, so it's abandoned in favor of incorporating the ghost story from later FNAF games (there is a lot of lore in these).
The end result is a movie that's about as scary as a scary broadcast TV show, like the first season of Supernatural, with no on-screen gore except dead bodies after the fact. I took a 10 year old who wasn't bothered by anything in the movie -- Poltergeist, this is not.
It has a great cast -- including Matthew Lilliard in a role that will make adults with knowledge of slasher movies smile at the Easter Egg and a very mean Mary Stuart Masterson (whose character's goals are kind of dumb, but who serves as a reason for the protagonist to take and keep the terrible job working as the night guard at Freddy's). There are a number of kid actors, all of whom do a surprisingly good job.
The script is OK, with some things never addressed -- it should be obvious that something weird is going on if there's only a night time security guard, not a day time guard -- but it's smarter than most of the slasher films this is paying homage to.
Given that this is Blumhouse's most successful opening weekend ever, there's almost certainly going to be a sequel to this.
I didn't hate being dragged to this, but probably nothing an adult without a strong emotional connection to FNAF needs to seek out while it's in theaters.
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