On Oct. 27, 2023, Five Nights at Freddy’s fans across the globe finally got the chance to see the movie that they had been waiting for. With a star-studded cast composed of Josh Hutcherson as the leading man and Matthew Lillard, Piper Rubio and Elizabeth Lail in supporting roles, many of the franchise’s fans are questioning if the movie could provide all that they could have hoped for in relation to the games.

Leading up to the release of the movie, I was a bit skeptical about how this movie would turn out. Between all the cancellations and rescheduling of the release date, I didn’t know what to expect from it. The pre-production of the movie started in 2015, all the way back when there were only three Five Nights at Freddy’s games released. The next phase of the production, filming, didn’t begin until Feb. 1 of this year, which wrapped in April. Between pre-production and wrapping, six more main title games were released under the Five Nights at Freddy’s name. The trailer for the movie came out in July of 2023 and since then, anticipation for the film rose among fans, including me.

Comparing this film to the games, there is a lot right and yet so different. Since the creator of the games, Scott Cawthon, worked on the movie alongside the production crew, I did not expect there to be much deviation from the original storyline of the first game. But the world that was built inside this project was much different than how the games described them to be. The timeline just did not add up. There are details in the movie that seem wrong from the game’s lore. For one, the characters in the movie are all switched up compared to the games. In the games, Mike Schmidt (Hutcherson) and Abby Schmidt (Rubio) are supposed to be William Afton’s children, but in the movie, the two are completely separate from the Afton name. This changes a lot of the storyline from the games because throughout the 13 versions in the entire franchise (including spin-offs), we see how each member of the Afton family was broken because of their father, and how that father tries to put them back together. Also, the character Vanessa (Lail) was not introduced until “Five Nights at Freddys: Security Breach,” which came out in 2021. So why would the writers include this character in a movie set in the first game timeline? Another reason the inclusion of Vanessa is interesting is because of who they made her related to in the movie: William Afton. As far as we know in the games, Vanessa and Afton were not related whatsoever, so why would they make them related for the movie? There are a lot of different details like that where the fans just aren’t sure why the filmmakers made these choices, but if we know one thing about the Five Nights at Freddy’s franchise, it’s that they never leave any stone unturned.

verall, the movie was amazing, though. With Jim Henson’s Creature Shop making the animatronics come to life, and Emma Tammi directing, the movie, while riddled with deviations from the original franchise, was a masterpiece and exactly what this fan was looking for. I wanted the film to reflect the horror aspect of the games and the story as a whole while still being different enough to isolate the lore to only the movie. Between the jumpscares and overall fright inducing storyline, I wanted this film to be a whole separate world, and that is what we got. There are rumors of a sequel, and if true, I will be watching. I always come back to Five Nights at Freddy’s.