Five Nights at Freddy’s
We have a new video game adaptation in theaters (and also uh, Peacock) and its review scores are looking a lot like those in the pre-Sonic, pre-Last of Us, pre-Arcane days. Five Nights at Freddy’s, a realization of the famed horror game, has debuted with a 26% on Rotten Tomatoes with 81 critics reviewing it.
To put that in context of the vast, and largely bleak, video game movie landscape, that puts Five Nights at Freddy’s lower than Warcraft, Prince of Persia and the infamous Super Maro Bros. movie from 1993. But it’s higher than about 30 other video game movies including a bunch of Resident Evil installments, Need for Speed, Assassin’s Creed, Doom and Hitman. And even in this new, higher quality era, it’s mostly TV shows that are starting to turn things around.
However, in this case, it likely does not matter much at all what Five Nights at Freddy’s review scores are, even less so than usual. The game is so iconic among Gen Z that A) they will see it no matter what critics say, and B) it is likely that more than ever, critics are pretty unfamiliar with the game and won’t really have any idea of whether it will satisfy actual fans.
Score
This past week, box office fortune tellers have forecast that Five Nights may open with $50 million, or even higher. That would put it above every horror movie debut of the year, including Scream VI, The Nun II and M3GAN.
And the thing is, it barely has to perform to become a big success because its entire production budget is $20 million. Like many horror movies, even a remotely engaging or well-watched movie can often make many multiples of its budget as generally speaking it’s just not an expensive genre to produce. Why do you think they’ve made ten Saw movies?
One odd factor here is that Five Nights at Freddy’s is also landing on Peacock at the exact same time. This is no doubt an attempt to boost Peacock sign-ups among a younger crowd, though Peacock is such a non-factor in streaming I doubt this would harm Freddy’s box office haul much at all. There’s even some concern that Freddy’s could perform so well over the next two weeks that it might actually take away from The Marvels, which has already struggled in ticket presales, and is aiming for a similarly-aged audience, at least in part, when it debuts in November 10.
It is not shocking that critics don’t like Five Night’s at Freddy’s. But nor should it be shocking that the movie is about to make a lot of money if you know anything about the game and the size of its fanbase. And you should also not be shocked when a sequel or two is instantly greenlit after the film makes five times its budget in ten days.
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