Five Nights at Freddy’s (FNAF) holds a weird position in pop culture. What started as a simple and campy horror game has evolved into a game franchise, a book series, and now a movie created by Blumhouse. It’s gone in and out of the zeitgeist over the past decade, but the franchise’s loyal following has the game into “cult classic” status. The game’s creator, Scott Cawthon, has had a big hand in its success through consistently adding to its roster of published content and strangely complex lore. But what exactly led to this homespun horror game becoming a big-screen theatrical release?
FNAF found a lot of its audience through YouTube and “Let’s Play” channels. These channels are run by creators who play through and comment on video games. A lot of Let’s Play content now exists on streaming platforms like Twitch, but in the early days, YouTube was king. FNAF became the golden child of Let’s Play videos, as countless online personalities attached their brand to the game. The game’s ability to scare the player and create tension made it enjoyable for an audience to view an online personality play.
Two personalities that stand out Markiplier, the screen name of Mark Fischbach, and MatPat, the screen name of Matthew Patrick both stand out as memorable personalities. Both creators made popular videos playing FNAF, deciphering its weird lore and creating a larger conversation around the game. Cawthon’s continued work to create new content and these streamers’ continued interaction with that content led to an online cult following that drove the franchise to success during the 2010s.
This is a little strange considering the actual gameplay involved in FNAF is not especially complicated or interesting. It involves watching cameras, turning lights on and off and closing doors to keep haunted animatronics from killing your character. Failure results in a jump scare and a reset of the game, A player only wins after “surviving” five of the game’s night cycles. It’s repetitive and formulaic, and even though later games would add mechanics and storylines, the franchise never veered far off this established path.
Yet countless other games have latched on to the coattails of FNAF, using similar mechanics and relying on jump scares and anticipation for their main source of entertainment. Maybe that is where FNAF’s simplicity helped it: it created such an easy blueprint for other games to use that it essentially developed into a subgenre of gaming. In turn, its popularity among gamers grew, and Cawthon could put more and more money into new projects.
The lore of Five Nights at Freddy’s is dense and somewhat convoluted, and like many long-running franchises, it can be difficult for outsiders to penetrate and understand. Critics from outside of FNAF’s following have always been rather harsh on its content and the stories it tries to tell. Only meant greater surprise when the FNAF movie was announced.
Granted, there have been talks of taking the game’s animatronics to the big screen for years now, almost since its inception in 2014. But it wasn’t until 2017 that the rights were acquired by Jason Blum at Blumhouse, and even then, filming didn’t begin in earnest until February of 2023 due to script delays and COVID-19.
Blumhouse was somewhat mocked for taking on the project, both because of its inherently campy nature and the perception of FNAF from outside groups. But the studio remained determined to create the film, and now, audiences will finally get to witness its awesomeness.
The cast includes some big names, like Josh Hutcherson of “Hunger Games” fame, and Matthew Lillard of “Scream” and “Scooby-Doo.” The two play characters fans of the game will easily recognize. Not much is yet known about the plot of the film or what beats they’ll pick up from the rest of the franchise, but if previous entries in the FNAF story are any indication, it will be mysterious and a tad disturbing. And since Cawthon himself had a heavy hand in production, fans of the franchise can expect it will stay true to its predecessors.
People have waited years to see this happen, and now that it is, the suspense is building to an exponential degree. What perhaps has people most excited is the news that the movie will make use of real animatronics for its antagonists. This was a must for the film since evil animatronics are such a core part of the game. Using CGI would be quicker and cheaper, but nothing compares to practical effects in horror movies when it comes to the fear factor. And just knowing that Blumhouse built and used enormous robots to act alongside its cast is exciting for many fans.
The film’s release date is set for Friday, October 27th, 2023. While none of us can be sure exactly what to expect from the Five Nights at Freddy’s movie, it’s certain to make waves in the franchise’s loyal fanbase.
