BEFORE: Guys, yesterday at Tribeca Film Festival, things were just plain crazy - the rain poured down for a couple hours, completely soaking the red carpet, which was in a tent outside the theater. The theaters were cool, but the A/C unit in the lobby wasn't working right so that meant it was not only super humid, but way too warm, and even though I wasn't wet from the rain, I was inside sweating most of the day, since I only work there, I can't afford a ticket. (Anyway, who needs a ticket when I have a backstage pass?) Seriously, though, I worked a 15-hour shift and got home after 2 am, we had 7 screenings at the theater so all day long we were either moving people in, moving people out or fixing broken things while waiting to move the next group of people in or out, I forget which. I need a day just to recover, so thankfully I'm only working like every other day.
Celebrities were all around, I was standing a few feet from Riz Ahmed, so there's another Star Wars actor for my life list (I already have his autograph on a "Rogue One" 8x10) but also Lily James was there, Paris Hilton on the red carpet, and I saw Peter Gallagher and Michael Gandolfini in the lobby. The last film of the day was "The Trainer", directed by Tony Kaye, and well, people were either very entertained by it, or very confused, maybe a little of both. But before that film screened, I saw Colleen Camp as she came to the show, now most people might not recognize her because it's been a few years since "Clue" and she doesn't really look the same as she did in that film. It's OK, people get older, even actresses, I met Annette Bening and Kathleen Turner at that screening of "Nyad", and I didn't expect them to look like they did in "The Grifters" and "Body Heat".
Speaking of which, Mary Stuart Masterson moves forward in time 37 years as she carries over from "At Close Range".
FOLLOW-UP TO: "Willy's Wonderland" (Movie #4,093)
THE PLOT: A troubled security guard begins working at a shuttered Freddy Fazbear's Pizza, and during his five nights on the job, he realizes that something is wrong with the pizzeria and discovers the truth about its animatronic characters.
AFTER: Sure, this may count as a horror film, and I usually confine those to October, but that rule only stands firm until I need one of those films to make the connections I need to make. I remember watching one of the "Alien" films outside of October, several others over the years, so all rules are made to be broken, if needed. This is why I've got all my horror films on a separate sheet, so I can start making connections among them to try to pre-determine which ones will help me form a good chain this October, and any films that DON'T connect to other horror films, well, they can be moved easily, like a loose brick that's needed in another part of the wall. I did learn too late that this film DOES connect to "Renfield", but it's OK, I'm going to try to watch that film this year, and I've already got it secured on both sides in a potential chain.
I did work at a screening of this film on Halloween in 2023, for the Visual Effects Society, but they also open up their screenings to the students at the School of Visual Arts, so a lot of them came in costume to celebrate Halloween by watching a movie before, I assume, going out to party - well, they're too old for trick or treating, so why not? They seemed to have a good time, so I felt good about adding this film to my list - and better to watch it now than to let it sit on my list for three or four Octobers while I try to link to it.
But even back in 2023, I was thinking, do we really NEED a second film about demonic, out-of-control animatronic animals at a shuttered pizza restaurant that's clearly a riff on Chuck E. Cheese's? We already had "Willy's Wonderland", and I just figured that would be the last word on that topic, especially considering that it was a film with Nicolas Cage where he battled those demonic robots and never spoke a word during the whole movie, thus accidentally perhaps creating the quintessential Nic Cage action movie? Aren't we just gilding the lily now if we allow there to be a second horror take on Chuck E. Cheese robots?
Well, I'm glad to report this is a completely different film, with a different take on those robots - the two films just used the same jumping-off point for inspiration, and Nicolas Cage is nowhere to be seen tonight. Anyway, "Five Nights at Freddy's" is based on a video-game, which itself was based on Chuck E. Cheese's, so yeah, totally a different animal. Instead of Cage, we have Josh Hutcherson as Mike Schmidt, a man raising his young sister after the death of their parents, however he's haunted by the memory of his little brother being abducted years ago, and being unable to stop it. His brother was never found, neither was the man who took him (gee, I wonder if that fact will be important later...) and Mike can't seem to hold down a job as a security guard, because he's overly cautious and mistakenly accuses a father of being a kidnapper.
But if Mike doesn't have a steady job, then his aunt Jane intends to file for custody of his sister, Abby, and threatens to prove to social services that she can provide a better life for Abby, however Mike suspects that she only wants the monthly custody payments. Either way, he takes the job guarding the abandoned, shuttered pizza restaurant at night, but can't quite understand why the building's owner won't sell it OR re-open it AND still spends money to maintain it and protect it. I admit, there are a few properties like that in NYC, one was the "Goodfellas" diner, not far from where I live, which was prominently featured in that Scorsese film, as well as several more recent movies ("Going in Style" for one) however it's only been used as a set in the last decade, it hasn't served any food in a long time, but the owner refused to tear it down because of nostalgia, and also the parking lot made a good place to park illegal RVs. Well, it finally burned down about a month ago, so that's that, I guess. We still have the other diner seen in that film (the one with the "Airline Diner" neon sign) but that's been a Jackson Hole burger place for years.
Where was I? Oh, yeah, Freddy Fazbear's. There is an explanation why people want to leave the place alone, it's because of all those missing kids. Wait, what? That should be a reason for the local populace to tear the place down themselves, or at least call for their elected officials to do so. Again this doesn't make sense, because if some bad nastiness went down there years ago, it makes more sense to bulldoze the place than to spend money maintaining it, guarding it and just letting it take up space instead of re-developing the property. Right? So really, it's a mystery why this place is still standing, but hell, I say that about Chuck E. Cheese's, too, which somehow survived bankruptcy and still has 676 locations worldwide, only fewer than 50 of them still have some kind of animatronic show. I've never eaten in one because I don't have kids and I live in the pizza capital of the world (sorry, Chicago) so there's no need. Anyway I was born too soon, all we had was McDonald's play-places.
While on duty at night, Mike seems to be vulnerable to falling asleep and dreaming about his lost brother, there's something about the place that sparks these dreams. A new twist to the recurring dream is that he meets five children who run away when he tries to ask them for information, hmm, could they be connected to the other missing kids from the past that the attractive police officer conveniently mentioned? Soon after, we learn that Mike's babysitter is on his aunt's payroll, she's been hired to find evidence that Mike should lose custody, only there is none, so Aunt Janet sends her and her brother to vandalize the pizzeria so Mike will get blamed for not preventing this, lose his job and Jane can file for custody of Abby. (How can you tell when a broken-down pizzeria gets vandalized?) It doesn't work, however, because the animatronic characters protect the restaurant and kill the vandals - ah, so something clearly is up here, but what?
No spoilers here, but maybe that helpful police officer knows more than she's saying - also there aren't that many characters here, so it's not TOO difficult to figure out the real villain, it's kind of like on the first 20 seasons of "Law & Order" if there was a notable actor listed in the credits, it was a safe bet their character would turn out to be the murderer. There's also a reason why this could fit in with Father's Day programming, but I'm just not going to label it as such. There are a few twists and turns along the way, and a fair number of jump-scares - and this film MADE money, there is also a sequel planned for, damn, later this year. Maybe I should have held off - nah, it's better to cross this one off, especially if the sequel's coming in December, that's after the usual horror month. Better to watch this now and worry about the sequel later.
Directed by Emma Tammi
Also starring Josh Hutcherson (last seen in "The Beekeeper"), Piper Rubio, Elizabeth Lail, Matthew Lillard (last heard in "Scream" (2022)), Kat Conner Sterling (last seen in "We Have a Ghost"), David Lind, Christian Stokes (last seen in "Stop-Loss"), Joseph Poliquin (last seen in "Project Power"), Grant Feely, Asher Colton Spence, David Houston Doty, Liam Hendrix, Jophielle Love (also last seen in "We Have a Ghost"), Michael P. Sullivan (ditto), Tadasay Young (last seen in "The Hunt"), Wyatt Parker (last seen in "Where the Crawdads Sing"), Lucas Grant, Jessica Blackmore, Garrett Hines (last seen in "Strays"), Ryan Reinike, Theodus Crane, Julia Belanova, Lisa Mackel Smith, Xander Mateo, Matthew Patrick, Bailey Winston, Gralen Bryant Banks (last seen in "The Lovebirds"), Cory Williams, Victoria Patenaude
RATING: 5 out of 10 colored markers
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