20
votes
‘Five Nights At Freddy’s’ $78m breaks mold on Peacock theatrical day and date; best opening for Blumhouse, Halloween and more
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- Authors
- Anthony D'Alessandro
- Published
- Oct 28 2023
- Word count
- 3252 words
One of those few franchises I just don't get. I enjoy stuff for all ages. I read YA (among other things), I watch cartoons. No problem. I play plenty of videogames. But every time I encounter young people's fascination with FNaF I feel like I'm 100 years old.
I've certainly got an 'outside looking in' kind of perspective going on, but I think a large part of it boils down to it being Gen Z's first exposure to a 'fantasy' story that has layers of background lore, and its all wrapped up in a setting that would make sense to them, which in turn has induced an emotional attachment that allows for so much 'forgiveness' toward whether any of it is of any quality.
But, "quality" is a hell of a subjective thing.
Kind of like early Millennials and our love for Napoleon Dynamite. That was "our" quote-packed summer movie, akin to how Ferris Bueller's Day Off was to Gen X. I certainly remember Napoleon Dynamite success being incredibly baffling to older generations, too. But when looking back to Napoleon Dynamite today, I can certainly understand the older generation's puzzlement. "Shut up Tina, you fat lard!" is certainly a baffling line to behold.
Lastly, since FNaF was an indie game, this was probably Gen Z's first time where they could see the creative process for world building in action, akin to Minecraft being the first game to release in 'unfinished' states and versions of alpha and beta.
There's also a lot of indie horror games that could probably trace it's lineage back to FNaF as well, for whatever worth that could be, given that the indie scene is so relatively young.
When writing this, I discovered that Napoleon Dynamite and Ferris Bueller both share the same theater release date, June 11. Lots of other really big films share that date too, like ET and Jurassic Park. Wild. Anybody know why?
I wouldn't say FNAF was "the first" one of any of those things for GenZ. It's just that it hit at the right time. It hit during the trend of "cute but scary" indie games. It hit during the rise of meme culture as memes started to move beyond advice animals. And it hit during YouTube's change in algorithm where it started favoring longer videos. That created a perfect storm for it to really hit it big among a certain audience.
GenZ grew up with the Harry Potter series and the Star Wars prequel series. It's not like FNAF introduced us to fantasy world-building. It just hit really hard with a certain segment of the generation.
That's another thing where there's not gonna be a defining movie for GenZ because taste and culture is so fragmented now. The monoculture of the video store or the radio just doesn't exist anymore.
I am part of GenZ (the older part of the generation), the game series, I kind of grew up with it and the YouTube videos. I have no idea why FNAF is popular, especially for the younger crowd of you look at the lore and stuff for the games. So yeah, this movie does not speak for all of us in GenZ, mostly because we have other things that we liked, with most of the things I liked might not get a movie adaptation because it might not be as popular as FNAF. And frankly I really don't care if they do.
Those are all Fridays except for Ferris Bueller. Second Friday in June, just after school gets out – great time to release a summer blockbuster.
This is less the case today, but it used to be common for that date to land in the first full week of summer break.
I feel like it has to do with how FNaF and the other things you mentioned are typically "experienced". Most FNaF fans probably haven't even played any of the games. They watched let's plays and theory videos, the latter was a huge part of the series success.
When a new cartoon series gets popular, even if you aren't necessarily a part of the target demographic you can still just, watch it. I don't even know what to call the initial Freddy's explosion, it was more of a collective internet whodunnit involving animatronic animals than a game series. If you weren't watching let's plays and game theory videos back then it probably just passed by.
If you were, then there was a good chance you were actively engaged in a community about a game you had never played. Try explaining that to someone on the outside looking in. Kind of a cliche but... you had to be there. It's like a puzzle that was a ton of fun to put together but now that it has it looks kinda mediocre. If you're looking at it now you see it for what it is, a fun, but convoluted story that doesn't quite fit together.
That's my take on it. The game doesn't have a set storyline or direction like a lot of games, just "try to survive the night", so it's entertaining to watch people play. No two play-throughs are the same, and some people know how to really play up their reactions. I watched multiple people play it just to see the range of reactions. The animatronics also added a lot of room for people to make OC's, so lots of potential for the fandom.
It probably helped that a lot of games released in a short period of time, keeping engagement and interest high. One thing I'll give FNAF credit for, they didn't have each game end on a cliffhanger like a lot of the newer games divided into episodes. The games could each, technically, be played on their own, and the mechanics were pretty simple overall.
I've seen it with my daughter, who I guess is the intended audience considering she liked it and talked about all the references they put in it for the rest of the evening afterward. She thought it was tense, scary and she liked the ending twist.
I'm not the target audience. I felt the movie was just kind of boring, took a long time to get going, the main bad guy was telegraphed quite heavily and I recognized it as such so the twist wasn't that big to me. Bogged down by a lot of side-story stuff that goes nowhere. The best I can say is that it has fun moments. I fundamentally believe this could've been a quite fun short series (4~6 15-20 minute episodes) of high paced scares.
I think if I was 15 I'd maybe like it more, but I also have seen much better horror movies at 15 so flip of a coin really.
I'm probably in the age range of the target audience. I was 14 when the first FNAF game came out and saw how it took the internet by storm.
But I never got into it, I never got into the lore, I didn't watch all those hour long YouTube videos that did deep dives of the story of the games. And I found this to be so boring. I wanted a refund despite watching it on Peacock.
I definitely would not have liked this at 15. But I was already watching art-house stuff at that age.
I watched it with some friends, and it was baffling to me how they had a literal jump-scare game and source material but didn't utilize it at all. I'm usually a "jump scares are cheap in horror movies" but this was a perfect opportunity.
They also really should have cleaned up the CGI a lot, I feel like the animatronics could have been scarier if they committed to the fuzzy Chuck-e-cheese look rather than the half fuzzy half shiny looks that we got.
The trailers didn't make this look good to me. I follow Game Theory who do videos on this franchise all the time. So I get that there's a huge community behind this. I imagine that's who this is for.
I haven't watched it, but I don't play the games or care much for the lore. I mean I enjoy the theory videos, but only casually
The bar is lower when you're 15. You've seen less crap, and your wants and desires are more simplistic than in your later '20s. 15 year old me thought Antoine Fuqua's King Arthur (2004) was just as awesome as Return of the King. Needless to say I do not feel the same way today.
Watched it last night.
Never played any of the games, watched a few of the Game Theory episodes on it back during the first game out of boredom, and never bothered beyond that.
While I wouldn't call it great, I enjoyed it well enough. The plot fell apart a bit going into the final act, with lots of revelations in a rapid succession.
The movie had more gore than I anticipated, and seemed like it was decently trying to push that PG-13 rating. It also had a number of cameos from various YouTubers which was a welcome sight.
Overall, it was a decent flick great for Halloween, and a welcome addition to the library of Not-Bad Video Game Movies
Never played it really, but the unoffical adaptation, Willy's Wonderland, was plenty fun. Just a silly B-movie like they used to make 'em. This Nicolas Cage fellow did a good job of being a bad-ass (and very VERY silent) lone wolf. He's kind of like a mix of the stoic avenger and a carefree slacker. Someone trick him into a job were he's to be a human sacrifice, and he's like, whatever man. Good fun!
Honestly kind of shocked by this. It did not look good to me, but I guess I'm not really in the target audience. I figured sending it right to Peacock was a sign they had no faith in it but apparently not.