Five Night At Freddy’s could be the biggest horror movie of the year. That is if it doesn’t drop the ball completely.
It’s not unprecedented for something like that to happen. Despite how much it makes me feel old, Five Nights at Freddy’s as a series just turned nine this year. What once was originally a small Indie horror game by a frustrated Scott Cawthon has become a media empire complete with multiple games, VR projects, a cavalcade of lore that is perfect fodder for YouTube channels, books upon books upon books, and now, a feature film. FNAF is popular, and with that popularity comes the dreaded spectre of commercial viability.
FNAF, as a series, can’t rock the boat too much anymore. There’s a certain expectation of what a FNAF game offers a player and that same sentiment is true for the upcoming film. There are certain beats that fans will expect from the Five Nights at Freddy’s movie and if the film doesn’t deliver on them, then disappointment will surely abound and audiences may not be scared because they’re so familiar with the beats and machinations of the series. Or, in other words, there is a chance this horror film may fail at being horrific. These are viable problems that the film could run into and I know this for a fact because these were the exact problems that another internet horror icon, Slender Man, encountered when he had a feature-length film.
Released in 2018, Slender Man was one of the first attempts to translate an internet horror icon into a mainstream horror icon. That attempt was a categorical failure. Yes, the film did well financially, turning in a $50 million box office haul from a budget of around $10 million, but critically it was ravaged and ridiculed. Audiences hated it, myself included, and the film went on to be nominated for the Golden Razzies for Worst Supporting Actress, though it deserved far, far more. I hate virtually everything that this movie does, but even an abject failure like Slender Man can serve as a cautionary tale for what Five Nights at Freddy’s needs to do in order to become successful.
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Firstly, both movies are unique in that they both originate from the internet. What horror that originates on the internet does that’s unique from other subgenres is just how quickly they’re able to evolve and develop. Multiple communities and forums online are able to take an urban legend like Slender Man and create an elaborate mythos surrounding him while traditional horror franchises, usually codified and shepherded by their authors, grow at a much slower pace. The same is true to an extent for Five Nights at Freddy’s from the mountain of fan games and homages over the years, but given how Cawthon has stepped away from the franchise in recent years and has handed the reins to other creatives, the series is able to grow with a clear authorial hand.
However, Slender Man didn’t really embrace the creativity that its online persona and fanbase generated. While the Slender Man of the internet had a creeping terror from how elaborate their origins were and the myriad of appearances they had in original stories, the Slender Man of the film has devolved into a traditional monster. He still retains that urban folklore appeal, but that’s all he is. None of the lore or grand history the internet developed around him is present, shunting all of it in favor of making him an accessible monster. Now there’s nothing really wrong with taking that approach, but it removes the unique characteristics that Slender Man has going for him and degrades him into just another boogeyman.
The same could happen for the Five Nights At Freddy’s movie if it’s mishandled. FNAF has a relatively deep and complex lore that spans decades in universe and while it would be impractical to try to cram as much of that in as possible, the concepts and ideas should at least be teased. By letting the audience catch a glimpse of just how wide and expansive the lore is, it can create a deeper interest in the franchise. If the film decides to just boil its key elements and themes into a safe and generic package for easy audience consumption, then it can lose that inherent appeal the franchise has and just become yet another horror movie.
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Without its identity, not only did Slender Man become a generic horror movie, but it lost virtually all of its scares. This goes beyond the film being a PG-13 horror movie, which limits the types of scares that could be shown, and instead broaches on trying to create scares by over-relying on tropes. For the love of God, when you type in “horror tropes” into Google, Slender Man is the first movie that pops up! Jump scares, creepy forests, summoning an unspeakable evil, you name it, Slender Man has it. While those tropes are acceptable when used sparingly when they’re the only thing that a horror movie relies on, they cease to be scary and become tedious.
If Five Nights At Freddy’s is to be successful, it needs to lean into what exactly makes it terrifying and not shy away from it. It shouldn’t tiptoe around the fact that it’s a series about dead children and should embrace that. Again, it’s a PG-13 horror movie, so it is limited by what it can exactly show, but you can still make a great PG-13 horror movie if you commit to creating a unique atmosphere. The Ring, another PG-13 horror movie, understood this and crafted a tense, dread-filled environment despite not having many gruesome scenes or scares within it. That may be a bit of a challenge for a franchise like Five Nights at Freddy’s, which has been embraced by children over the past several years, but not impossible. In fact, Wally’s Wonderland, which replicates a lot of the charm of FNAF, still differentiated itself from that series due to its unique tone.
Ultimately it still needs to commit to that horror and not shy away from it, something that Slender Man did. While there wasn’t a whole lot of controversy surrounding Five Nights at Freddy’s as a series, Slender Man as a pop culture icon actually was pretty controversial for a time. Arguably due to his status as one of the progenitors of internet horror, he was the motivating factor of real-world violence, such as when two 12-year-old girls stabbed one of their friends because they believed it would appease Slender Man. It may be because of this that the film was heavily censored, with many shots from the trailers hinting at terrifying sequences being completely removed from the film.
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Because of this, Slender Man comes across as a horror film that’s afraid to be scary. It can’t fulfill the basic functions of the genre because it doesn’t want to offend anyone or risk being controversial. Horror is oftentimes meant to create a visceral reaction within the viewer, so of course horror is going to be controversial. I can’t confirm or deny that those scenes were removed due to the controversy surrounding Slender Man as a character, but their absence still results in a movie with nothing going for it other than basic and incompetently done scares.
It may be risky for Five Nights at Freddy’s to try and take a risk and depict the horrors committed by William Afton, but they shouldn’t shy away from it. The film is still PG-13 so it can get away with frightening images and uncomfortable scenarios. Each game in the series also sports a T rating so the film shouldn’t ignore the uncomfortable subject matter that murdering children brings. By all means, the film should go big and take a risk. It’s not like it’s going to fail anyway. The Five Nights At Freddy’s film is almost certainly going to turn a profit at the box office, mostly due in combination to Blumhouse’s frugal development philosophy and the popularity of the franchise. So go big! Try something wild! If it doesn’t work, then if a sequel gets greenlit, they’ll know what they can and can’t get away with. But they won’t know that unless they try.
Despite not really playing any of the games since the release of Sister Location, I want Five Nights At Freddy’s to be successful. It’s not really because I have an admiration for the franchise, but because I think that it can serve as a gateway to other internet horror franchises and even high-quality creepypastas to get some kind of mainstream recognition. Horror as a genre is in need of some kind of a shake-up and this could be the gateway for that. But in order to succeed, you need to learn from your failures. Slender Man is a failure of a film, that statement can not be denied, but lessons can be learned from it that will hopefully ensure that Five Nights At Freddy’s doesn’t become the latest failure of internet horror film adaptations.
