Like all genres, horror is subjective. And sometimes, a movie can struggle to be scary or engaging, especially when it comes to more offbeat concepts. However, as a master of horror, there's something about Stephen King's stories that make them endearing, and as odd as it may seem, shades of King's best works are present within Blumhouse's Five Nights at Freddy's movie.
Created by Scott Cawthon and released in 2014, Five Nights at Freddy's was an overnight video game success that launched a multimedia franchise. Focusing on a haunted pizzeria franchise, Five Nights at Freddy's popularized the concept of animatronic horror, paving the way for films like M3GAN, Willy's Wonderland and The Banana Splits Movie. It was in 2015 that news of a big screen adaptation of Cawthon's games made headlines, but it wouldn't be until 2023 that it began filming with its stars, Josh Hutcherson and Matthew Lillard. After sifting through multiple scripts, directors and production companies, the Five Nights at Freddy's movie finally left development hell with unimaginable hype as the horror movie got closer to completion.
How Stephen King and Five Nights at Freddy's Brought Childhood Fears to Life
There's no denying the success and popularity of the Five Nights at Freddy's franchise, having evolved well beyond video games, books and merchandising to receive the Hollywood treatment. However, it raises the questions of why a Five Nights at Freddy's film is garnering so much hype, what made the series so gripping in the first place and how the film is channeling it all to meet audience expectations. Surprisingly, the secret to Five Nights at Freddy's success is something tried, true and utilized in the scariest stories of author Stephen King. From various teasers and supposed leaks surrounding Blumhouse's Five Nights at Freddy's adaptation, it seems behind the scenes, the crew is well aware of these tropes and using them in the best possible ways.
What made adaptations of King's IT, Cujo and The Boogeyman appealing to audiences is something simple to reflect on but hard to bring to life -- childhood fears. For children, the world can be frightening, where the possibility of encountering killer dogs, strange clowns or getting sucked down the drain can feel all too real. What King and Five Nights at Freddy's always did best was make those ideas scary again, personifying them and making them tangible. The horror in the Five Nights at Freddy's movie largely stems from its robotic stars, which create a disturbing pastiche of Chuck E. Cheese's uncanny animatronics that have haunted many childhood memories.
Cawthon's mechanical monsters, known to evoke nostalgia for the 1980s and uneasiness, were brought to life by the unparalleled talent of Jim Henson's Creature Shop, with scares in mind and authenticity at heart. Additionally, early teasers released by Blumhouse and on-set photos show an old Freddy Fazbear's Pizzeria as an unsanitary, decaying place, with all the zeitgeist of a '80s Chuck E. Cheese, creating disgusting environment viewers could imagine crawling through as kids. While the film likely incorporates a self-aware sense of humor, as is typical of the series, there are evident efforts by Blumhouse to utilize the same elements that attract audiences to King's works to deliver a slice of nostalgic nightmare fuel.
Blumhouse Is Utilizing Nostalgia - And That's a Good Thing
Nostalgia goes beyond terror, and what set much of King's works apart was his exploration of growing up, along with familiar imagery related to it. Creepshow paid tribute to the horror comics read by children under their covers, Silver Bullet utilized a small-town setting and family dynamics to tell its story, and even It's Losers Club called to mind friendships of Summers past. At this point, even King's works themselves are nostalgic, with projects like Stranger Things doing what they can to bring people back to a time when the author saturated horror culture. Within everything seen so far, from the campy Chuck E. Cheese aesthetics to the brightly-colored animatronics to the hints of a young protagonist, Blumhouse understood the games had a nostalgic charm indelible to its storytelling. Like King and those who adapted his works, the Five Nights at Freddy's movie relies not only on its established fanbase but what they loved about the series in the first place.
Whether a novel, movie or something else entirely, the best of the horror genre has a story to tell and a way of connecting with the people who experience them. Horror may be subjective, but feelings of vulnerability, dread and nostalgia are universal, brought out in projects like Blumhouse's Five Nights at Freddy's and the works of Stephen King. The Five Nights at Freddy's movie already shows plenty of promise and a fine grasp of the source material, understanding that when it comes to the franchise, its future is in an evocative past.