FIVE NIGHTS AT FREDDY’S

Name: FIVE NIGHTS AT FREDDY’S
Item: FIVE NIGHTS AT FREDDY’S
Author: Cooper Dowd

"Unacceptable Ghostly Subplot"

Content: -3 Excessive sex, violence, immorality, and/or worldview problems. (Sometimes excessive content such as violence is in otherwise redemptive movies.)

Entertainment Quality:

	None	Light	Moderate	Heavy
Language
Violence
Sex
Nudity

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What You Need To Know:

FIVE NIGHTS AT FREDDY’S is a horror movie aimed at teenagers. A security guard named Mike is troubled by the kidnapping murder of his younger brother years ago. Later, his mother died, and the two tragedies led to his father’s death. Now, Mike is taking care of his younger sister, Abby, but he’s having trouble holding down a job. Meanwhile, their morally shady aunt is threatening to sue Mike for custody of Abby. So, Mike takes a low-paying night job at an abandoned Chuck E Cheese knockoff called Freddy Fazbear’s Pizza. Eventually, the animatronic robots at Freddy’s come alive and target Mike’s sister.

Based on a video game series, FIVE NIGHTS AT FREDDY’S is a well-made scary movie. Not everything is explained or makes sense, however. That said, for a simple horror movie, FIVE NIGHTS AT FREDDY’S has some provocative, fascinating themes. The movie’s worldview is mixed, though. Mike is heroic and must save his sister. However, part of the plot involves some menacing ghosts who sometimes help the hero. FIVE NIGHTS AT FREDDY’S also has four obscenities and lots of scary violence.

Content:

(PaPa, BB, OO, L, VV, M)

Dominant Worldview and Other Worldview Content/Elements:

Mixed pagan worldview where the hero is trying to stop a serial killer and protect his younger sister from the murderer, and solve his younger brother’s murder, but it’s mixed with some occult content where several ghost characters can communicate with living people and are often malevolent, but they also sometimes help the hero, so the movie sometimes promotes the evil idea that it can be okay to consult ghosts, or the spirits of dead people

Foul Language:

Four obscenities, including one “s” word

Violence:

Strong scary violence includes it’s implied that a man is killed by a mechanical device with sharp features, man is cut by people in a dream, and the wounds appear in real life when he wakes up, mechanical robots looking like large two-legged animals (a bear, a fox and chicken) come alive and menace people, the robots have glowing eyes that startle people and viewers when they open, ghost characters menace hero and desire to kill the hero’s younger sister so they can play with her in their limbo world, a

Sex:

No sex

Nudity:

No nudity

Alcohol Use:

No alcohol use

Smoking and/or Drug Use and Abuse:

No smoking or drugs, but man takes sleeping pills to find clues to the identity of his younger brother’s kidnapper and killer in his dreams; and,

Miscellaneous Immorality:

Mad villain is shown to having lied to hero, and hero believes he can manipulate his dreams to reveal missing details in his past memories of a traumatic event.

More Detail:

FIVE NIGHTS AT FREDDY’S is a horror movie intended to attract teenagers about a young man who’s troubled by the kidnapping of his younger brother years ago and who gets a security job at an abandoned Chuck E Cheese knockoff, where the animatronic robots come alive and target his younger sister. FIVE NIGHTS AT FREDDY’S is well made and, for a simple horror movie, has some provocative themes, but part of the plot involves some menacing ghosts who also help the hero at times, and there is some foul language and scary violence.

The movie begins at an abandoned Chuck E Cheese knockoff called Freddy Fazbear’s Pizza. The chubby security guard is scared out of his mind. The animatronic robots, Freddy the bear, a chicken, a fox, and another creature are alive and coming after him. The guard is knocked unconscious and then is shown strapped down to a chair as a menacing robotic machine with sharp blades inches toward his face. The camera cuts away, and a loud, curdling scream is heard.

Cut to the troubled young man, Mike, losing his job as a mall security guard. Mike thought he saw a man kidnap a little boy. He chased the man and started beating him up while the boy watches. Sadly for Mike, the man was the boy’s father.

It turns out that Mike is traumatized, because years ago his mother asked him to look after his younger brother, Garrett, while the family was camping at a family-oriented campground. Mike got distracted by a frisbee someone threw. The next thing he knew, some man in a car was driving Garrett away, and a frightened Garrett was staring at Mike from the rear window. Every

night, Mike wears headphones listening to sounds from the woods and replaying the kidnapping in his dreams. He hopes the dreams will give hm some clues as to who kidnapped Garrett.

Now, Mike is looking after his little sister, Abby. Their mother died suddenly, and their father couldn’t handle the stress of losing both a son and a wife. However, Mike is having trouble holding down a job. So, his mother’s sister is trying to get custody of Abby, but she just wants the foster care money Abby can bring her.

So, Mike takes a low-paying job as the night security guard at the abandoned Freddy Fazbear’s Pizza. The first couple nights, he dozes off wearing his headphones and has a dream where five children suddenly appear at the old campground and seem to know something about the man who took Mike’s brother.

Meanwhile, Mike’s aunt secretly hires Abby’s babysitter, her boyfriend, and two other male friends to break into Freddy’s during the day and trash the place. By trashing the place, she hopes Mike will be fired once again, and she can get custody of Abby. However, as the boys trash the place, the robots come alive and kill them all.

Eventually, Mike and Abby find out what’s really going on at Freddy’s. It’s all related to what happened to their brother and to the five children in Mike’s dreams.

Based on a video game series, FIVE NIGHTS AT FREDDY’S is a well-made scary movie. Not everything is explained or makes sense, however, and moviegoers might figure out parts of the ending. That said, for a simple horror movie, FIVE NIGHTS AT FREDDY’S has some provocative, fascinating themes. For example, like the NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET movies, it plays around with the idea of Dreams versus Reality in a unique way. There are also themes about Man and Machine, Regret, and Free Will.

The movie’s worldview is mixed, however. On the one hand, though he’s definitely flawed, Mike is heroic. Eventually, for example, he must step up and protect his younger sister from evil forces. On the other hand, part of the plot involves some menacing ghosts who can talk to people in their dreams or in the real world. The ghosts are sometimes malevolent, but they also sometimes help the hero. As a result, the movie sometimes promotes the evil idea that it can be okay to consult ghosts, or the spirits of dead people. In the fictional world of the movie, the ghosts really are the spirits of dead people, but in the real world beyond the movie theater, “ghosts” are not really spirits of dead people but are actually demons posing as dead people. The movie would have been more acceptable if the ghosts were shown to be totally malevolent or fake.

Finally, FIVE NIGHTS AT FREDDY’S also has four obscenities and lots of scary violence.

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Quality:

- Content: -3