I’m going to make this review relatively short. I had to waste two hours of my life watching this garbage, so I don’t want to spend more than 15 minutes writing a review on it.
Now I’ll admit, current horror and slasher flicks aren’t my jam; but I’ll give any movie a chance. In 2015 there was a movie called “Green Room” about a punk band locked in a backstage area and murdered by the club owners. I wasn’t looking forward to that, but ended up enjoying it a lot. So the idea of a security guard being trapped at a Chuck E. Cheese’s style place called Freddy Fazbear’s Pizza and the electronic bears coming to life and murdering people…wasn’t necessarily going to be the deal breaker for me.
Three inept screenwriters gave us this story, based on a video game.
Josh Hutcherson, who was in the “Hunger Games” series and “The Kids Are All Right” (my favorite movie of 2010), for some reason agreed to be in this dreck. He plays a character raising his little sister, after his mom’s recent death. He takes meds because he’s still dealing with his little brother being abducted and killed when he was in charge of watching him at a picnic (when both parents were still alive). For some reason, his sister is really bratty. Oh, and she talks to ghosts. Her aunt feels she’d be better at raising the girl, and it seems like she might be right (but we quickly see her evil side).
It was nice to see she was played by Mary Stuart Masterson, who I loved in all her 80s films and would like to see more of in movies.
A police officer (Elizabeth Lail) shows up at Freddy’s, to check on the new security guard, and that whole relationship becomes bizarre.
There’s a yellow rabbit that’s creepier than the bunny in “Donnie Darko” and there are a handful of things that will make you think of better horror movies you’ve seen.
There were a couple of humorous scenes that worked, but most of the dialogue and story was utterly ridiculous. I actually thought of a number of ways to make scenes funnier. For example, after a bunch of craziness at the pizza joint, father and daughter are driving home. He asks if she wants spaghetti or pizza for dinner and she replies with a smile, “Both!”
Why not have her say, “Uh dad…I don’t ever want to eat pizza again in my life!”
You may think that’s a spoiler but…the movie is rather predictable, and I’m not saying the bears from the restaurant don’t show up at her house (there’s a scene halfway through when they do).
I also thought they could’ve played Alice Cooper’s “Welcome to My Nightmare” in the closing credits (although a fan of the video game sitting in front of me screamed with excitement when the closing credits played the music from the video game). It is hard to complain about the music when there are segments involving dreams and they play “Talking in Your Sleep” by the Romantics. It was cool to hear “Connection” by Elastica, and my favorite was seeing the bears dancing around the stage to Iggy Pop’s “Real Wild Child.”
So, I’ll give the movie 1 star out of 5, and that’s only due to the soundtrack.