Mike’s had a pretty rough go of it.
A few weeks ago, he lost his job as a mall security guard for beating up a guy he thought was kidnapping a kid. Turns out the guy was the kid’s dad; and he wasn’t kidnapping the kid, he was just trying to leave the mall.
Mike’s actions, while unacceptable, were somewhat understandable though. His younger brother was kidnapped when Mike was 12—while Mike was watching him. And he’s lived with the guilt ever since, even revisiting the scene in his dreams in an attempt to remember who the kidnapper was.
But Mike has other problems, too.
His mom died a few years back, and his dad took off shortly after that. Now Mike is the sole caretaker of his little sister, Abby. The bills aren’t getting paid, since he has no income. And his manipulative Aunt Jane is petitioning the court to have Abby placed in her care instead.
Mike needs a job if he’s going to have any shot at keeping Abby. But his only option is a night guard shift at Freddy Fazbear’s, a derelict pizzeria that got shut down in the ‘80s.
There’s something haunting about Freddy’s. Maybe it’s the creepy, life-sized animatronics scattered around the joint. Maybe it’s the high turnover rate of security guards. Or maybe it’s the five children rumored to have disappeared there.
But Mike doesn’t have a choice. He’ll have to survive many nights at Freddy’s if he wants to keep his family together.
Mike and Abby bicker, as siblings are wont to do. However, they also love each other very much and don’t want to be separated.
Mike’s feelings are a bit more complicated though. You see, he was the one who was supposed to be watching Garrett, his brother, on the day Garrett was kidnapped from a park. Mike turned his back for just a moment and Garrett was gone forever. So as much as Mike loves Abby, he just can’t let go of what happened.
As the film progresses, Mike finally learns how to process what happened—and recognizes that it wasn’t his fault after all. More importantly, he realizes that while he can’t undo that tragic day, he can make a difference for Abby. And he chooses to focus his efforts on helping her, sacrificing some of his own selfish desires and setting healthier expectations for himself in the process.
Vanessa, a police officer with a personal connection to Freddy’s, helps Mike out of several scrapes. She also manages to overcome her greatest fear in order to help Mike and Abby escape certain doom.
Aunt Jane isn’t the nicest of people. However, when Mike asks Jane for help in caring for Abby, she obliges.
Mike recounts saying grace at meals with his family before Garrett’s disappearance. It was something he took for granted back then but cherishes as a memory now.
As the plot unfolds, we learn that five ghosts play an important role in what’s happening at Freddy’s.
[Note: The balance of this section contains spoilers.] Four animatronic animals (and one animatronic cupcake) roam Freddy’s at night, seemingly killing anyone they encounter. We quickly learn that these machines are controlled by the ghosts of five children who went missing at Freddy’s.
But it gets more complicated.
Mike harbors a theory that human beings can never truly forget anything. The theory suggests that humans can recall any detail from their lives through dreams. So Mike attempts to recall Garrett’s kidnapper through dreaming.
However, when Mike begins working at Freddy’s, the ghosts are somehow able to enter those dreams. Mike correctly assumes the kids know who Garrett’s kidnapper is. And it also turns out that any injury they inflict on Mike in his dreams affects him in the real world as well via the animatronic characters each child possesses. (The ghosts also have telekinetic powers.)
Moreover, Mike learns that Abby’s imaginary friends (whom she’s had her entire life) are actually the ghosts from Freddy’s. And they want Abby to join them as a ghost.
Further investigation reveals that Mike and Abby are connected to the ghosts because Garrett was kidnapped and killed by the same person. They offer Mike the chance to permanently live in a dream where Garrett is alive. And he momentarily accepts an offer to give them Abby in exchange for this dream version of Garrett, but quickly recants.
None.
Five Nights at Freddy’s is filled with jump scares (often paired with violent deaths). The animatronics controlled by ghosts look like incredibly creepy cartoonish animals with eyes that glow red on occasion. And they have a habit of suddenly disappearing and then reappearing in murderous rage.
A man is killed (offscreen) when his face is forced into an animatronic mask with saw-like gears running. Another character barely escapes the same fate (he manages to hit a release button on the clamps holding him down).
Several people are murdered by Freddy’s animatronics, but we don’t see these deaths occur directly: a cupcake robot attacks a man’s face and he screeches in pain; shadows show a woman lifted into the air and chopped in half (her lower half splats on the floor); we see the silhouette of a man getting slammed around a storage closet and a bloody handprint on the door; a fox robot leaps at a few different characters and we hear their screams. However, we see the corpses of these characters (the cupcake’s victim no longer has a face) later on.
In his dreams, Mike chases one of the ghost children and manages to catch him. The boy screams, his eyes drip blood, and he cuts Mike in the dream. (In the real world, one of the animatronic animals has similarly wounded him.) In a later dream, the children attack Mike again, giving him several deep wounds.
One of the animatronics travels to Mike and Abby’s house, either knocking out or killing Jane. (We only see the end of her legs on the floor). A man is shot with a gun but is seemingly protected by the animatronic suit he’s wearing. A woman is choked and stabbed and later is shown unconscious in a hospital.
A man offers to kill Mike so Jane can take custody of Abby, but Jane declines. Someone threatens to shoot Mike.
We hear about the kidnappings and deaths of six children, including Garrett.
Mike tackles a man he thinks is a kidnapper into a fountain and beats him mercilessly. The camera only shows Mike’s face during this sequence, demonstrating the blind rage he feels. (And the man’s son looks on in horror.)
Mike and Vanessa use tasers and electric staffs (which Vanessa says are used for animal control) to disable the animatronics at Freddy’s.
[Spoiler Warning] We eventually learn that the five ghost children were killed when they were placed in the animatronic suits. We don’t see it happen, but the clamps were operated by springs and presumably impaled the children when they were shoved inside. (Vanessa demonstrates this by placing a broom into one of the broken suits in storage. The clamps snap the broom in half easily.) Later, a man is very slowly killed by one of the suits when the clamps impale him one by one.
There are singular uses of the s-word, “a–” and “a–hole.” We also hear three uses of “h—.”
Mike takes prescription sleeping pills in order to help him dream about Garrett. However, Vanessa is concerned about his habit, and she tosses them in a river. She tells him he needs to be awake when he’s working at Freddy’s. (Though he later refills the prescription at sleeps at Freddy’s anyways.)
Abby notes that Jane smells like cigarettes.
Mike suspects that Jane only wants custody of Abby so that she can receive a check from the state for acting as Abby’s foster parent. Jane insists that Abby is mentally ill despite professionals assuring her that Abby is normal. And she tries to garner sympathy by faking tears and acting like Mike is a monster.
Jane’s plot to frame Mike involves extreme deception and illegal activities, and she uses one of Mike’s closest associates against him.
Characters lie. Several people break into Freddy’s, damaging everything in sight and stealing the valuables they find (they fill a bag with money from a coin machine). We hear a father abandoned his children after his wife died. Mike is rude to a pharmacist. Abby angrily crosses out Mike’s face in all her drawings after he arranges for Jane to babysit her.
[Spoiler Warning] The murderer of Garrett and the ghost children manipulates them through the psychology of pictures. Since he knows children are heavily influenced by what they see, he draws happy pictures of himself with the kids so that they’ll think he’s friendly.
Five Nights at Freddy’s—based on a popular horror/survival video game franchise—feels oddly restrained.
Most horror flicks nowadays, especially those with themes from the ‘80s, as this one has, don’t hold back when it comes to graphic slasher scenes, extreme sexuality or harsh profanities. Even movies with PG-13 movies can get away with a lot of that kind of content these days.
Now, that isn’t to say Freddy’s is clean—far from it, in fact—just that the violence here isn’t as bloody, gory or graphic as I was expecting.
That said, there is a lot of deadly violence. Most of the stuff takes place offscreen, but we hear every terrified scream, jump scares typically precede them, and sometimes we see the acts take place through shadows or silhouettes. (Some corpses show up later, as well.)
Parents should also be aware that six of the film’s victims are young children. And there’s nearly a seventh. These children are kidnapped (led away by a predator at a Chuck E. Cheese-style arcade) and then brutally murdered, never to be seen again.
As if that wasn’t frightening enough, five of these children become ghosts that then haunt Freddy’s. They possess the animatronic animal suits (which are horrifying and might give folks nightmares by their appearance alone) and begin killing nearly everyone who enters Freddy’s thereafter.
On top of all that, there’s still some foul language and other sketchy activities taking place.
So the question isn’t (as some of the film’s posters suggest), “Can you survive Five Nights at Freddy’s?” The question is should you or your family even bother trying?
Emily studied film and writing when she was in college. And when she isn’t being way too competitive while playing board games, she enjoys food, sleep, and geeking out with her husband indulging in their “nerdoms,” which is the collective fan cultures of everything they love, such as Star Wars, Star Trek, Stargate and Lord of the Rings.
