Five Nights At Freddy 39;s 2 Vr Review
Mathilda Gibby
The story happens every few years. A parent attempts to sue some family establishment (like a theme park or a restaurant) because a child was traumatized when he saw a wandering mascot not wearing its massive cartoon head. Those kids are lucky. At least there's an actual, live, profusely sweaty human under Mickey's cool exterior. But imagine if there weren't. Imagine that underneath Mickey Mouse's exterior was nothing but a soulless, poorly programmed automaton, and that it might toss the first person it sees into an empty cartoon suit full of grinding metal and gears.
Now imagine your job is to watch over those creepy mascots at night. Five nights, in fact. And instead of having all of Disney's power and money to shut down any attempted Electric Parade uprisings posthaste, you're working at a second-rate Chuck E. Cheese called Freddy Fazbear's that has just enough electrical power to keep the desklight and the security cameras running between the hours of 12 a.m. and 6 a.m. (And that's if you decide you're safe enough to keep open the metal doors that you can lock down if you detect any threats.) This is Five Nights At Freddy's in a nutshell, but even that explanation doesn't begin to express just how nerve-wracking an experience it is.
It's nerve-wracking even before the real terror starts. The game is well aware of just how unsettling the bright multicolored fantasy objects we hoist onto children on a regular basis are in the right light, and your first look around at Freddy Fazbear's Funtime Palace--empty, dimly lit, and derelict--is a little chilling. Before anything out of the ordinary even happens, every synapse in your brain is sending the message that you do not want to be here. But for a few minutes, all is well, thanks to a recorded message left for you each night by your predecessor, a guy with a business-casual midwestern lilt who gives you a basic rundown on your duties and the morbid history of the place. And even then, this man's reasonable tone when talking about people being stuffed into the metal suits, or when describing a disturbing incident called "The Bite of '87," puts you on edge.
But then his message is over, and the real game begins. Your job is to flit back and forth between the security cameras, ensuring all the wacky animatronic characters are where they're supposed to be, which is in the back room. When they're not--and the fear instinct that comes with realizing that will serve you well here--your job is simply self-preservation. Close the doors, turn on the lights outside your office, and wait for Freddy or one of the others to wander away. The trick of it all is the battery bar at the bottom of the screen. Every action you take drains it, and drains it quickly, so keeping the lights on or the doors closed for half of your shift means the power to the whole place gets killed about 20 seconds before you do, in one of the most sudden and terrifying jump scares ever executed in any medium. Survival is a matter of conservation, observation, and timing.
Five Nights at Freddy's may not seem like much of a game, and indeed, aside from the appearance of Foxy, the animatronic beast that awakens on night three, there are no real surprises once you've mastered the particulars and have died frequently enough. Only one of the animatronics actually moves while you are directly watching it, telling when you need to be on the ball, and hitting the lights or doors is easy until the later chapters. But the devil is in the details. Five Nights At Freddy's works its terrible magic because of contrasts. The part pizzeria's daytime atmosphere is replaced with desolate, looming shadows at night, rending the happiness with an ominous pallor. There's no music outside of the main menu, so anytime the oppressive silence is broken by footsteps, or random humming, or a sudden sting when one of the animatronics is right outside your door, is cause for sheer panic. In addition, while most of the story is imparted by the nightly phone call, if you're observant, you might notice how a particular sign you see changes its message from time to time. It starts with a warning against running or pooping in the pizzeria, but later morphs into a newspaper clip reporting on dead children. The print is so small that you have to squint to see it, which means ignoring your actual duties. And hello, you're dead. Being observant might save your life in Five Nights at Freddy's, but being too observant will get you killed.
The real miracle here is that the game communicates its gut-wrenching horror without a single drop of blood, yet still belongs in the upper echelon of horror games. You could describe Five Nights at Freddy's as consisting of mostly still pictures, but it's that stillness that causes you to sit there, hands shaking, with less than five-percent power left, praying the clock ticks over to 6 a.m.
I was intrigued when I heard the news about the game receiving a film adaptation. FNAF as a video game is predicated on building suspense and unease as the player tries to survive each of the five nights until all those building feelings inevitably climax with a violent animatronic jumping onto your screen. So I was hoping the mood of those games would translate well into, at the very least, a competent horror flick. What was received instead was a piece nearly devoid of all tension and a showcase of something plaguing most established franchised Hollywood productions.
Trauma and horror have always gone hand in hand, but it seems as though recent horror films have been honing in on that aspect, and this film is not an exception. However, this FNAF adaptation never dives into their trauma with any depth, always preferring to stay on the surface level. I was initially expecting little depth in the FNAF movie. Still, when a film starts to tackle fundamental themes like preconceived trauma and its effects on people, we expect it to tackle those themes with more depth than a kiddie pool with just an inch of water.
It is Halloween time, which is scary movie time. I love watching spooky flicks this time of year, but no one in my family wants to. My wife and 13-year-old hate them, and my 7-year-old daughter is too young. My 10-year-old son is likely too young, but he likes to be spooked, and I'm a bad dad. So, I took him to see the latest video game adapted into a movie. I mean, he loves video games; maybe we just ignore the fact that the movie happens to be about some animatronic animals that gruesomely kill people.
The movie is an adaptation of the same-name video game that already has numerous sequels, dozens of comic books and graphic novels. Mostly kids play the game, and with a PG-13 rating, the studios want those same kids to come to see the movie. But is it OK for them, and is it even that good?
I don't want to give away too much of the plot, but the movie revolves around a night guard at the now-abandoned Freddy Fazbear's. Think of ShowBiz Pizza or Chuck E. Cheese. It doesn't take long for the night guard to start seeing some strange things and he soon discovers the "lovable" animatronic animals come to life ... and are not always friendly.
The movie starts with a solid scare and does a fine job of playing up those moments. There is a certain dread, and director Emma Tammi creates a claustrophobic atmosphere where anything can come from anywhere at any moment.
I already laid out the premise of the movie for you. Needless to say, it's ridiculous. Instead of a masked murderer out for revenge on some oblivious teenagers, these are animatronic stuffies made to play guitar and sell pizza. It's silly, but that's the charm.
You know what's coming and can't help but smile at the absurdity. Some good jokes and surprising visuals will make you chuckle, even though you shouldn't. I am trying to say that the movie is stupid, but that's not necessarily a bad thing.
Too often, the problem with video game movies is the story. There isn't enough there to keep you interested in what is going on with the characters. I can't say that "Five Nights at Freddy's" is an Oscar-winning story (I didn't want it to be), I just wanted it to hold my attention.
I will avoid spoilers, but there was enough of a story with the characters involved that I wanted to get to the conclusion. I wanted to know what was happening and got breadcrumbs sprinkled throughout the run time. It was enough information to satiate my appetite and leave me wanting more. Sure, it was clumsy and rushed at times, but I was surprised the story kept me as engaged as it did.
As you can imagine with the title, the movie takes place over five nights. Scary movies always have a build-up of tension and then release the scary. Then, they build the tension again to hit you with another scare. "Five Nights at Freddy's" followed the same formula. Still, the tension or quiet moments often lasted too long, and I almost forgot I was watching a horror movie.
The violence is not constant, but it comes on quick. You don't see much of the blood and gore, but a couple of moments will take you by surprise. It is a horror movie, and they are trying to give you the chills. It could very well be too much for some kiddos who are more sensitive to scares.
As I mentioned, I took my 10-year-old. He did OK with the scares because even with the horror playing out, it's tough to take it too seriously when it's done by a fluffy bear with a top hat. Where my son got nervous was the alluded child violence. There are themes of kidnapping and violence towards children that can be disturbing. Nothing is shown, and what happened is never discussed in detail. Still, those elements are there, and I think many younger audiencegoers may find it tough to handle.
"Five Nights at Freddy's" is not a home run, and I don't know if I'm running back out to see it, or if it'll be a yearly Halloween go-to, but I did have fun. My son enjoyed it, but did mention some of it scared him more than he wanted to admit.
All those 'only's make it sound shallow, but believe me: They're components of a frightfully effective nightmare machine. Keeping the bots at bay drains power from a battery, and conserving enough juice to last the night is FNAF's challenge. It's impossible to keep the battery topped off. Idling away the hours and not touching anything (a very foolish thing to do) still ticks down power from an overhead light and a nearby spinning fan obviously too far away for me to reach over and turn off while I'm scared out of my mind.
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