So, I went into this film expecting a total B-movie cash grab that might have been too late in the works to be relevant. I can say that I was pleasantly surprised that they did put some actual effort into the production, which was great to see.
I didn’t dislike the film, but I feel like there was more of a story they were trying to tell but it was getting pulled in a lot of directions all at one. The horror scenes with the animatronics really fought for screen time that was pretty heavy already with dialogue and exposition. I could see the potential for a really good film buried deep within though. I really wanted them to tease out more information about Garrett’s kidnapper and possibly delve deeper into the idea that Mike was a substance abuser losing his grip on reality. He spent his waking hours suspecting random strangers of being child abductors and his resting hours in a pill-induced stupor obsessing over the same dream again and again. Would have been neat to explore that in relation to the events at Freddy’s.
I saw Vanessa the cop as both a necessary supporting character to do exposition dumps, but also a pointless side character who never seemed to explain or justify the reason why she was in the scene, and Mike never questioned why she was there either. I actually thought that the plot twist at the end was going to be that Vanessa was the kidnapper and Mike couldn’t see her for what she was despite his hypervigilance because he was blinded by his preconceived notions that Mike must have been kidnapped by a man, despite the kidnapper never explicitly being shown in the dream.
The acting at times wasn’t spectacular, but passable. Maybe it was intentional that some people seemed to be “playing a role” given the reveal at the end? Josh Hutcherson and Piper Rubio did great in their roles, but everyone else came across as either phoning it in or just generally being too corny for the camera.
Overall, it was worth the watch, but don’t expect it to scare your pants off. It’s a pretty tame movie that fans of the game will definitely enjoy.