With Hallowe’en just a few days away, it’s not surprising that horror films are filling our cinema screens. The latest entry in that genre is FIVE NIGHTS AT FREDDY’S. Based on the popular videogame series of the same name (you’ll be forgiven if you didn’t know there was such a game because I didn’t either), the film tells the story of a troubled young man who lands the job from hell. Well, not hell but it ain’t a great gig either.

Mike Schmidt (Josh Hutcherson, THE HUNGER GAMES franchise; THE DISASTER ARTIST) has a lot going on in his life. The 20-something year-old is the guardian to his 9-year-old sister, Abby (Piper Rubio). He’s haunted by the memory of the disappearance of his younger brother, who was kidnapped while on a family camping trip before Abby was born, and to try to figure out who could have snatched his brother, Mike takes prescription sleeping pills in the hopes that his dreams will reveal some new clues. Between the pills and the pressures associated with looking after his sister who has her own issues, Mike keeps losing his jobs. At a low point, he visits Steve Raglan (Matthew Lillard, SCREAM; the SCOOBY-DOO! animated films and TV series), his career counsellor, who offers him a job as the night security guard at Freddy Fazbear’s Pizza. The Chuck E. Cheese-style family restaurant has been sitting derelict since the 1980s after five children disappeared from there. It seems that things go bump in the night at the former diner and Mike’s dreams lead him to believe that there’s a connection between the restaurant’s animatronic anthropomorphic animals and the disappearance of his brother. On his second night on the job, he’s visited by Vanessa (Elizabeth Lail), a local cop who seems to know more about the restaurant than she’s letting on. Meanwhile, Mike’s Aunt Jane (Mary Stuart Masterson, FRIED GREEN TOMATOES) is aggressively trying to pry Abby away from Mike, ostensibly so that she can collect the government money that Mike has been receiving for raising the child.

Wow, is this film a stinker! The writing by Scott Cawthon (who created the original story) and others is so sloppy that you’ll be scratching your head in a combination of confusion and incredulity more than once as you suffer through this film. If Mike can’t hold down a job, where does he get the money from to put food on their table, gas in his car, and pay for his prescription pills? Who is keeping their home so neat and tidy and their clothes so clean? Could Vanessa be any more transparent in her attempt to be opaque? Why hasn’t anyone reported that people have gone missing after going to Freddy’s? Why hasn’t that building been razed to the ground regardless of what the owner wants? Why is Mike so accepting of the possibility that the animals are possessed by ghosts? (That’s not a spoiler because it’s in the trailer and I assume it’s in the game too.) Even worse, the writers telegraph the story’s ending ten minutes into the film. After that, it’s mostly 90 minutes of Mike going into his dreams to try to identify the person who nabbed his kid brother. This is not what the film should be about. It’s a horror film without much horror to it.

As inane as the writing is, the acting is just as risible. Hutcherson has a perplexed look on his face throughout the film, probably because he’s wondering why his agent convinced him to take on such a dog of a project. Masterson, who has been in films for almost 50 years, fares somewhat better but only because she may have wanted some extra cash for her retirement. Perhaps the only good thing about the film is the animatronics, which were done by Jim Henson’s Creature Shop but, even then, director and co-writer Emma Tammi doesn’t lean into their inherent creepiness enough once the lights go out.

Now let’s talk money. Blumhouse wouldn’t have produced this film if they didn’t think it could make a profit from it. Like many of their films, this one was cheap – only US$20 million – and I would venture to say that most of that money was spent on the animatronics. It’s not going to take very much for this film to turn a profit. That means that it’s very likely that audiences will be spending more nights at Freddy’s before too long. Kill me now.

FIVE NIGHTS AT FREDDY’S opened in Hong Kong yesterday (October 26th) and opens around the world today. You’d be better off spending your money on Hallowe’en candy than on this rubbish.

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