Five Nights at Freddy’s is not the movie you want it to be. I make that broad statement outright because everyone in the target audience here will fall into one of two categories. Either you have played the videogame series that inspired the film or you are into horror. I personally fall into the latter category. That said, While the movie looks great, it never reaches the levels of suspense, much less horror hoped for. Directed by Emma Tammi (The Wind) with a screenplay by Scott Cawthon, Seth Cuddeback, and Tammi, from a story by Scott Cawthon, Chris Lee Hill, and Tyler MacIntyre you would expect a little more than “good enough”. What we get is a movie that can’t balance the story with the appeal of the source material.

Mike (Josh Hutcherson) is haunted by memories of the kidnapping of his younger brother. Jumping from job to job, he is taking care of his younger sister Abby (Piper Rubio) while fighting pesky Aunt Jane (Mary Stuart Masterson) for custody of Abby. Recruiter, Steve Raglan (Matthew Lillard), offers Mike a job as the overnight security guard at the shuttered Freddy Fazbear’s Pizza. The 80’s era Chuck E. Cheese rip-off has been closed for years, frozen in time because the owner hasn’t had the heart to demolish it. Mike’s only job is to monitor the bank of archaic security monitors to ward off thieves and squatters. What Mike doesn’t know is that the clunky animatronics once used to entertain kids have taken on a life of their own and roam the halls.

As the title indicates, we only have five nights to survive at Freddy Fazbear’s Pizza and you think that this countdown would serve as the structure for mounting suspense. Not the case here. Instead far too much attention is heaped on the trauma that drives Mike and not enough time is given to the suspense and mechanical monsters that we came to see. Instead of claustrophobic scenes of cat and mouse between Mike and the mechanical minions, we are treated to redundant scenes of child abduction during a family camping trip. We get to see Freddy, Foxy, Chica, and the rest who are expertly recreated by the Jim Henson Studios team, but we never get the level of tension that makes these characters so menacing.

As mentioned, Five Nights at Freddy’s looks great. Marc Fisichella‘s production design with Mark A. Terry‘s art direction really captures the look of the game when we are at Freddy’s. Jim Henson’s Creature Shop impeccably recreates the bulbous, modular look of the iconic monsters making them functional in the real world while maintaining their game aesthetic. I would even give Hutcherson and Lillard positive marks for their respective roles. That’s not why we are here though. Fans of the game are eager to relive the feeling they had when they first played the game and horror fans just want to be scared. Nothing much happens that will excite horror fans and I can only imagine that the game didn’t spend so much time outside of the titular fun spot. Fans of the game might enjoy spotting the various Easter Eggs said to be sprinkled about but the movie just doesn’t deliver. I wonder what Uwe Boll might have done with this property.