A security guard takes up a sketchy night shift job in order to support his little sister as her primary guardian — what could go wrong? 

Absolutely everything. 

Blumhouse Productions’s movie adaption of the popular horror game series, “Five Nights at Freddy’s,” was released on Oct. 27. The franchise has a stunning total of 13 video games and 28 published books since the original game’s release in 2014. 

The storyline follows a security guard, Mike Schmidt (Josh Hutcherson), who begins working at Freddy Fazbear’s Pizzeria — a children’s restaurant similar to Chuck E. Cheese — in order to financially support his little sister Abby (Piper Rubio). After beginning his first night on the job, Mike is met with an unprecedented situation: murderous animatronics that were not included in the job description. 

The movie has been a hit in the box office, earning nearly $132 million globally in opening weekend alone. There is a rather lengthy timeline of the movie’s production process that begins as early as 2015 that I must preface this review with. 

In April of 2015, Warner Bros. Pictures acquired the rights to the film. However, in January of 2017, “Five Nights at Freddy’s,” creator Scott Cawthon informed fans that the movie met “several roadblocks,” and he had problems with the film industry’s take on the project. Production was then halted until a later unknown date. But, in March of 2017, Jason Blum of Blumhouse Productions announced he would be producing the movie, alongside Cawthon. 

I am a major “Five Nights at Freddy’s,” fan and have been since the first game’s release. I grew up around horror from a young age. Once I became a tween, I was finally allowed to watch horror content and stumbled upon a play-through of the then-new indie horror video game, “Five Nights at Freddy’s,” by YouTuber Markiplier. 

Ever since clicking that video, I have been an avid fan. 

The movie hit nearly all the marks, but it lacks key horror components such as gory murders and terrifying jumpscares. These elements are required for a horror storyline as intricate as “Five Nights at Freddy’s,” that were, unfortunately, left in the games.

The hidden lore behind certain cutscenes and dialogue is crucial for the plot of each game — it’s what connects the entire story. YouTubers, such as MatPat from The Game Theorists, have created countless videos dissecting easter eggs and subliminal messages left throughout the games. These hidden details reveal a much larger story that was somewhat fleshed out in the movie, but certainly not enough.

A part of this fault lies within the fact that the movie was rated as PG-13, which kept it from being perfect. The movie adaptation sugarcoated the games’ gruesome plot points in its storyline. If the movie were rated R, writers and producers would have had much more freedom to indulge in the gore and horror elements that the games are iconic for. 

I would not recommend anybody watch this release without taking a brief overview of the lore the games entail. Without prior knowledge of the importance of many easter eggs included in the film, viewers will be clueless and feel unsatisfied. 

But I am more than satisfied with the movie and cannot wait for the next installment in this cinematic series. From its eerie, purposeful choices of angles of cinematography to its fascinating real-life animatronics used in production, details and effort to perfect it for fans certainly did not go unnoticed, at least not for me. While it may not be as scary as I anticipated or hoped for, “Five Nights at Freddy’s,” allowed me to rekindle joy from my childhood and gladly welcome many new people into the fandom.