Jamie
As we churn through films (and particularly as the year’s crop gets decimated by the Good Review Plague sweeping the BMT movie fields) sometimes we have to look in the mirror and ask… wait… shouldn’t we just do the best (read: worst) movie available? It’s amazing to look back and see how we valiantly stayed the course through the storm that was straight-to-streaming releases. We (mostly) avoided dipping our toes too far onto that slippery slope and years later it looks like the storm may have passed and it’s a beautiful story of courage. But now it’s not the theaters that are too empty, but rather the pockets of the reviewers are too full (only kinda kidding). Luckily this time the changes we can implement involve watching better (read: worse) BMT films. So for “Achievement” we originally put in the remake of House Party. It vaguely fit the category and yet… why? If the crops are so lean, shouldn’t we pick the best fruit available instead of, you know, eating rotten fruit. A+ analogy.
To recap, Mike is having a tough time. His parents died leaving him in charge of his kid sister Abby. Add a conniving aunt looking to take custody of the girl and an inability to keep a job due to his obsession with the long past kidnapping of his younger brother and things are looking rough. In a last ditch effort to keep Abby he agrees to take a job as the night security guard at a defunct Chuck E. Cheese style restaurant called Freddy Fazbears’s Pizza. The place is creepy, filled with giant animatronic robots, and a police officer lady Vanessa is all up in his business, but as they say, “It’s a living.” (or is it… the opposite? Bum bum bum). As part of his obsession, Mike lucid dreams about the day his brother was kidnapped and finds that in Freddy’s he interacts with a bunch of kids that claim they can find his brother’s killer. Add on top of this that when he brings his sister he finds that the animatronic animals are actually “alive” and she can talk with them and they love her. We know this is bad news though, as the aunt hired a bunch of vandals to break into the Freddy’s and we see the robots rip them to shreds. Vanessa is pissed. He has to take this seriously. Mike leaves Abby with the aunt one of the nights and dreams about the kids. He accepts their offer to take Abby in exchange for having the younger brother back and in real life we see the robots (really the ghost kids) kidnap Abby. He returns to Freddy’s and is able to stop the robots, but his employment officer shows up and reveals that he’s the killer of the kids (and Mike’s brother) and that Vanessa is his daughter (what a twist!). He aims to kill them all, but Abby is able to draw pictures for the robots that reveal the evil of the man. They turn on him and everyone lives happily ever after (besides all the people who died). THE END.
Horror is in an interesting spot. This and M3gan were the two big smashes of the year and they are simply not scary. But I think that is kind of the point. They are baby horror. The audience isn’t there to throw up in the aisles. They are there to get a few scares while also getting their daily dose of memes (the FDA now recommends at least two memes a day for anyone under 17 years of age). So that’s one problem with the movie. The other is that the ending doesn’t make much sense. Matthew Lillard was obviously the bad guy (you don’t get MLil on board for nothing) but his motivation and plan are nonsense. Anyway, the point is that this is not a good horror film, nor is it a good film film, but… I still liked it. It’s fun. Interesting story, fun big robots (especially the cupcake), and Hutcherson does a good job. I had a good time watching it. I thought it was actually quite a bit better than M3gan because the setting, situation, and characters were more interesting and likable. So take that, M3gan! I like Five Nights at Freddy’s better!
Hot Take Clam Bake! It was all a dream, duh. You guys didn’t get that? I mean, the whole film is about a kid who lucid dreams about solving his kid brother’s murder. So you think he does that with the help of a bunch of ghosts in the Chuck E. Cheese machines? You think that makes sense? Dreams never really make sense when you think through the logic and details and check out the ending? Does Matthew Lillard’s motivations and plan make sense? Nope. It’s a dream. You just got tricked by a dumb dream movie. Hot Take Temperature: Pizza.
Patrick?
Patrick
‘Ello everyone! Are we talking about a plotless game being made into a film only fans of said game like because it isn’t scary and mostly confuses people? Let’s go!
Kind of fun.
But only kind of.
Because (checks notes) it isn’t scary and mostly confused me. Joking about the second, the story is really straightforward. But no, it isn’t scary.
I think I need to steal Jamie’s bit for a second. Hot take: this isn’t a horror film. As a matter of fact, I think a lot of horror films (of the bad variety mostly) aren’t really horror films. They are thrillers. M3gan fits the bill as well. It is like calling Meg 2: The Trench a horror film. Are creature features horror films? I guess. Is Jaws a horror film? I guess. But really they are something else because they aren’t meant to scare, but rather to shock and thrill. M3gan is like a techno-thriller, although that is a little closer because it gets close to slasher. But once you cross the rubicon and reach to expand your audience I think you can easily cross over from slasher (horror) to serial killer film (thriller). Is Silence of the Lambs a horror film? I guess it could be classified as such.
My point is that horror has become too large of a tent. We need to be much clearer about what we are getting. This film is closer to a serial killer thriller than a slasher I think, partially because the body count is too low, and partially because the primary focus of the film is the investigation and pursuit of a serial killer. As a serial killer thriller it also sucks because it doesn’t thrill and the serial killer isn’t interesting. It suddenly tacks into the supernatural, when the serial killer itself should be far more specifically what the film is about. Also, as a small supernatural-adjacent serial killer thriller The Black Phone is superior (and also distinctly flawed).
Come at me. I love genres, and I think there needs to be more of them. And when you cross genre bounds and become a mix (like a horror-comedy) either both sides of the genre equation have to be good (rare), or it has to be more specifically one (like Shaun of the Dead, which is obviously a comedy, not a horror film really). This is more of a thriller and it sucks at it really, but it takes way too long to get to the point where you realize it is a serial killer film anyways.
The actors are game though and the young cast in particular were fun. I would be interested to see any of them in anything else.
Let’s go with MacGuffin (Why?) for the missing brother which motivates the main character’s entire arc. And Worst Twist (How?) for the obvious reveal that the only other major character (played by Matthew Lillard) is the murderer, duh. This film is closest to Good I think, despite being not scary it is a halfway decent thriller film in the end.
I’m going to try and make a version of this movie that is more my speed in the Quiz. Cheerios,
The Sklogs
Bad Movie Twins 