Five Nights at Freddy's (2023)

Written by CinemaSerf on November 2, 2023

Didn't Josh Hutcherson used to be famous? Well here he is reduced to the role of the struggling brother of "Abby" (Piper Rubio). Their aunt (Mary Stuart Masterson) is determined that this hapless bag of bones isn't fit to look after the young girl - after he takes out a visiting father in the fountain of a shopping mall and gets fired; so "Mike" has to get another job! Opportunities are thin on the ground, but there is a vacancy doing the security night shift and an old, derelict, pizza parlour. How hard can it be? Well a meeting with the enigmatic police officer "Vanessa" (Elizabeth Lail) should have rung alarm bells, and when he has to take "Abby" there for one overnight shift - well it's soon clear that this place has secrets to keep and that it knows how to manipulate the hopes and fears of "Mike" and his sister. Can they stay sane and focussed long enough to survive this maze of malevolent mechanical bunnies? I'm afraid the presence of Matthew Lillard never helps a film, and here is no different - this is just a rather nonsensical attempt at a spooky mystery that certainly has nothing to make you jump. Rubio is actually quite decent, but there's isn't enough else happening to compensate for the very slow build up, surfeit of dialogue and frankly rather silly underlying premiss. I suppose as Halloween gets bigger and bigger, we are going to get more and more of these mediocre offerings - but despite it's more prominent cast, this just belongs on the Horror channel at 2am.