What if I rewrote the ‘Five Nights at Freddy’s’ Movie?
Boy, I am about to anger a LOT of hardcore FNAF fans! But hey ho, here I go! Full disclaimer first: I’m not gonna explain what Five Nights at Freddy’s is. If I were to go into great detail about the games, the movie, the books etc. I would here all week! So, if you don’t know the ins and outs of this franchise, this article isn’t going to make a lot of sense, because I’m going to assume that those reading are already fans of the franchise, or at least know enough to know what the hell I’m talking about!
Now with that out of the way, as a huge FNAF fan myself, I have to say that I thought the film was…ok. I’m sorry! I know there are a lot of hardcore fans who adored the movie, and I didn’t think it was BAD...but I still had my issues with it.
First of all, I felt like the film couldn’t decide what age demographic it was trying to reach. The games have a lot of young fans because it’s one of those horror games that, while it has a lot of jumpscares and spooks, they don’t portray a lot of graphic violence or gore on screen. So, it can be appropriate for younger kids who are just starting to get into the horror genre. Kind of like how the Goosebumps books were appropriate for a younger audience, even though they were horror. So, I understand why the film would want to appeal to their younger audience, but this caused a lot of unexpected tonal shifts, where sometimes the film felt like it was trying to be a ‘serious’ horror movie, and other times when it was more comedic.
And yes! I’m thinking about the fort scene! And before you come for my throat, I understand that scene was supposed to portray the fact that the animatronics are kids at heart, since they’re possessed by the ghosts of children. But, for me personally, it still felt jarring because the rest of the movie tried to be more serious.
Second of all, some things never got explained in the film. Now, I know! This is FNAF; nothing gets explained easily. But, considering this film is also trying to appeal to an audience that may not know all the ins and outs of the games, I did think it was weird to not explain some stuff. For example, why could the drawings essentially ‘mind control’ the animatronics? And what was the purpose of the torture Freddy mask? I thought, maybe, the mask was to cut people down, so they fit into the animatronic suits better, but then we see later that their bodies are stuffed in without their faces and bodies cut to pieces. I also heard somewhere that the mind control drawings might be connected to one of the spin off books, but I’m not sure.
Finally, there were a lot of little things that really pulled me out of the immersion of the film. For example, Max being cut in half by Freddy’s mouth. As shocking as that scene is, there’s no way Freddy’s jaw is that strong or sharp to cut through a person’s torso! And the bit where Mr Cupcake ‘jumped’ across the room to bite Mike? I’m so sorry, but that part had me howling with laughter in the cinema! It was so clunky and clearly a rope pulling it, I felt like I was watching a low budget 80’s movie!
So, there you go, those are the gripes I had with the movie. But even so, I still enjoyed the film, and I’m glad we’re getting another one in December, and a third one after that. But there’s something else that stood out to me about the movie. The movie is very different from the plot of the games. Now, that’s fine by me! The plot of the games is SO complicated that I’m not surprised they changed a bunch of stuff to make it more understandable for a wider audience. But these changes got me thinking...could you create a FNAF film that was closer to the plot of the games? Is that even possible? Would it make sense? Well, I decided to give it a go and try! So, the rest of this article is going to be a summary of MY version of the FNAF movie, IF you tried to make the plot closer to that of the games.
Full disclosure: I’m not saying that my version of the movie is or would be better than what we got. I’m just experimenting with what a FNAF film that’s closer to the games could look like.
Background Story
I’m going to start by explaining the background story that I would base the movie on. This background stuff would be shown through flashback scenes in the actual movie, but for the sake of clarity, I figured I’d write the whole thing out here first. Fans of the games will see where I have taken parts of the games’ plots to make this background plot for the movie.
So, William Afton starts off as the owner of Fredbear’s Family Diner (not Freddy Fazbear’s Pizza Place, yet). Back then, Fredbear’s only had two animatronics; Golden Fredbear (a.k.a. Golden Freddy) and Spring Bonnie. William also has a wife and three kids; Mike, his eldest son, Lizzie, his middle daughter, and Evan, his youngest son. (Yes, I’m using the name Evan for the youngest son instead of David, because that was the first name lots of fans agreed on for the longest time. Plus, I prefer the name Evan to David. Also, I’m calling the daughter Lizzie because that’s closer to Elizabeth, her original name from the games, instead of Abby, which is what she was called in the actual movie).
Mike doesn’t like Evan. He thinks Evan is pathetic and scared of everything, and only takes joy in tormenting him by scaring him whenever he can. When Mike is 16, Evan is having his 8th birthday party, and Mike doesn’t like the attention Evan is getting. So, he decides to play a prank on Evan. He and his friends hold Evan up as close as they can to Golden Freddy’s face, because they know Evan is terrified of the animatronics. Unfortunately, Freddy’s jaw clamps shut suddenly around Evan’s head, crushing his head and killing him. Mike isn’t sure how that happened, and William, in a blind rage, explains to him that the springlocks in the suits tighten and go stiff when water is spilled on them. Evan was crying so his tears are what triggered the jaw to clamp shut.
Evan’s death causes William to become an alcoholic who buries himself in his work, neglecting his duties as a father. Because of the bad press that Fredbear’s received after Evan’s death, William decided to create a new pizzeria with four new animatronics, Freddy Fazbear’s Pizza Place (where the movie takes place). Meanwhile, their mother, William’s wife, becomes a grieving lifeless zombie of a person, and eventually she dies by suicide. Mike essentially has to look after himself and Lizzie during this time.
When Mike turns 18, he announces he’s leaving home and he’s taking Lizzie with him. William tries to fight for custody over Lizzie, but ultimately the courts rule in favour of Mike because William is a drunk now, the mum is dead, and Mike has proven he can take care of Lizzie by this point. This is partly because Mike feels incredibly guilty about what he did to Evan, so he’s been trying to make up for it by being a proper big brother to Lizzie. Mike and Lizzie leave William behind to start a new life, and Mike changes his and Lizzie’s surnames to Schmidt as an attempt to forget the past.
So, there’s your backstory. Like I said, all of these events would have happened before the start of the movie and would be revealed through flashbacks. Now, onto the actual movie!
The Plot of my version of the FNAF movie
The movie would open in Freddy Fazbear’s Pizza Place, as a child is being lured by someone into a backroom. This person is wearing the Spring Bonnie animatronic suit, so we don’t see who this person is, but we do see the child suddenly being killed by this strange person. Then, we’d have the opening credits, during which we see a sequence of news reports of the missing children’s bodies being found stuffed into the animatronics at the pizzeria.
YEP! That’s right! I’m making it so that the children’s bodies get found in my version of the story! I know the whole point of the games if that William gets away with the murders of the children because the police don’t find the children’s bodies in the animatronic suits. But you can thank my husband for pointing out something kinda obvious about that plot point; the police ALWAYS use sniffer dogs when searching for dead bodies. There is NO WAY a sniffer dog therefore wouldn’t find the kids’ bodies, even if they were stuffed into the suits.
So, during these opening credits, with the sequence of new reports, we also see William Afton being arrested. However, he’s charged as not guilty for the murders, because the courts don’t have decisive evidence that he committed the murders. The person who killed the kids always wore the Spring Bonnie suit so no one could see who it was, and there’s no security footage showing William putting the suit on. Someone else could have put on William’s suit instead to kill those kids. So, William is let go, but as a result of the murders, Freddy Fazbear’s Pizza Place is still shut down and becomes rundown and abandoned.
After the opening credits, we watch someone break into Freddy Fazbear’s Pizza Place. They look like a homeless person just looking for shelter for the night. They start getting stalked and hunted down by something, but we don’t see what yet. This homeless person is then killed by this mysterious stalker.
Now we cut to Mike and Lizzie living together. Lizzie likes to draw and Mike sees that she’s been drawing Golden Freddy and Spring Bonnie (the old animatronics from William’s first pizzeria). Mike is furious and rips up her drawings. She runs to her room crying. When Mike goes to bed that night, he takes his sleeping pills. He’s been taking pills every night for some reason. As he goes to sleep, we see a flashback of Mike arguing with someone about leaving and taking custody of Lizzie, but we don’t see the face of the person he’s shouting at.
Mike has a job as a mall security guard. One day, he spots some older teenage boys picking on a younger boy. Mike absolutely loses it watching these older boys harassing the younger boy, and starts beating them up. He gets fired for beating up a bunch of minors, instead of trying to reason with them or make them leave. He goes home to Lizzie, and Lizzie’s babysitter, Max, feeling terrible.
That night, Mike is so tired he forgets to take his pills. He wakes up in a nightmare, where Nightmare Golden Freddy is hunting him and Lizzie throughout the house. Mike also sees Evan during this nightmare. Evan asks Mike, ‘Why? Why did you do it?’, before Nightmare Golden Freddy eats him. Mike wakes up with a start after Evan is eaten.
For the next few days, we see Mike apply for several security jobs, but he doesn’t get hired for any of them, because of his record after beating up those teenagers. Then one day, at home, Mike and Lizzie get a knock on the door. It’s their father, William. Mike is beyond shocked, asking how William found them. William explains he tracked them down when Mike’s antics with those teenagers ended up in the news. William tells Mike he’s sorry about everything that happened between them, that he doesn’t blame Mike anymore for what happened to Evan, and he understands why Mike had to take Lizzie away. To prove to Mike that he wants to be a better father, he offers Mike a job as a night shift security guard at his old, abandoned pizzeria. Williams explains some ruffians keep breaking in every now and again, so he’s looking for someone to keep an eye on it. Mike refuses, saying he can look after himself and Lizzie without William’s help. William leaves but gives Mike his number if he changes his mind.
We get another flashback and see that Mike was arguing about custody of Lizzie with William. William talks about how Mike ruined his life and his work after ‘what he did to Evan’. He talks about how he has to start all over again with a new pizzeria because of the old one’s tainted reputation. Mike leaves the house, but not before promising Lizzie that he will come back for her soon.
Back in the present, Mike eventually calls William back and accepts the job offer because nowhere else will take him. William is beyond thrilled and hopes this will be the start of their family ‘becoming whole’ again someday. On his first night at the pizzeria, Mike sees the animatronics moving on his screens. But when he goes to investigate, they’re all magically back on stage and in the same positions. Mike believes he must just be seeing things. He then almost trips over this bucket in the middle of the floor that’s collecting dripping water from the ceiling. He gets annoyed by it (and trust me, there’s a reason I’m mentioning this bucket).
When Mike sees Max the next morning, he talks to her about how he could have sworn that he saw the animatronics move. Max is immediately intrigued; turns out she and her friends are big into paranormal stuff and exploring abandoned places, so she gets excited at the possibility that the pizzeria could be haunted.
On the 2nd night at the pizzeria, Mike sees the animatronics move again on screen. When he goes to check on them, he’s shocked to discover they actually have moved this time! We get Foxy running at Mike, BUT I wouldn’t have him do the typical Foxy run. I’m sorry, I know that’s blasphemy, but considering the animatronics move pretty slowly most of the time, it feels jarring that Foxy can run that fast. Instead, I’d have it that Foxy is at the end of a long corridor with a flickering light, and as the light flickers, he suddenly disappears and appears again every few feet, creating his ‘run’. I also just think that would look creepier. Mike runs back to the office, almost tripping over that bloody bucket again, and locks the door. He convinces himself he must be hallucinating, so he downs more sleeping pills and knocks himself out. In the morning, everything is seemingly back to normal.
Maybe some stuff between Mike and Lizzie happens the next day to show more of their sibling bond, but I haven’t thought that bit through much. But then on the 3rd night, Mike starts hearing the voices of children whispering, and one of those voices sounds a lot like Evan. He leaves the office to investigate (almost trips over the bucket again), and in a back room, he discovers the broken suit of Golden Freddy, the animatronic that killed Evan. Mike has a total freak out, and that’s when we get the full flashback of what happened to Evan. We see the whole scene of Mike and his friends forcing Evan near Golden Freddy, Freddy’s jaw killing Evan, and William screaming at Mike about how Evan crying on the springlocks would have triggered them to clamp shut, causing his death.
Back in the present, Golden Freddy tries to move towards Mike, but because he’s broken, he can’t move far. Mike tries to run away, but the door is mysteriously locked. He therefore escapes through the vents to get back to the office. While crawling through the vents, he hears something following him. Now it would make sense for Mr Cupcake, Chica’s companion, to be the thing following him. However, I found Cupcake on his own a bit too goofy in the actual movie. There is one way I can imagine him appearing scarier though. Imagine Mike looks behind him while crawling through the vent. Mr Cupcake is just randomly sitting there, in his normal, cute form, looking very nonthreatening. Then slowly, his animatronic body decays and withers into Nightmare Cupcake, before he starts lunging for Mike. Mike scrambles to the office, jamming the vent grate shut. He then locks himself in, takes more pills and goes to sleep.
![FNAF/C4D] Nightmare Cupcake Jumpscare](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!8R0K!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F0a99820b-e1a7-4c5d-acc1-2bc86c2f7bf1_734x449.jpeg "FNAF/C4D] Nightmare Cupcake Jumpscare")
The next day, Max the babysitter and her friends decide to break into the pizzeria during the day while Mike isn’t there. They enjoy exploring abandoned places and looking for paranormal stuff. They all get hunted down and killed by the animatronics. Again, I’d have the animatronics move via disappearing and reappearing in flickering light. Also, I would have Max die a different way, instead of being bitten by Freddy, since we already have a Freddy bite scene in my version of the movie with Evan’s death.
On the 4th night, Mike now can’t get a hold of Max to babysit Lizzie (can’t imagine why), so he has no choice but to take Lizzie with him to his night shift. The animatronics then try to kidnap Lizzie. Mike tries to save her, and they try to kill him. But then Lizzie defends Mike, and the animatronics listen to her and stop. Mike and Lizzie aren’t sure why. Lizzie asks the animatronics what they are, since they seem to listen to her. The animatronics show Mike and Lizzie the security footage of someone in the Spring Bonnie suit killing them when they were kids and stuffing their bodies into the suits to try and hide them. Mike and Lizzie then realise that they’re the ghosts of those kids possessing the animatronic suits.
Mike then realises something. He rushes back to where he found the broken Golden Freddy suit. Golden Freddy starts moving again, but Mike isn’t scared, because he realises it’s Evan’s spirit inside. The three siblings are reunited finally and have a big hug. Mike and Lizzie ask what they can do to help set the ghosts free. Evan shows them a drawing of his birthday party, the one he never had because Mike got him killed. Mike then has an idea. Him and Lizzie then spend the rest of the night helping to recreate Evan’s birthday party for everyone. They hope that having a proper birthday party might help the spirits let go and move on. After they finish decorating, they go home to rest, ready to celebrate the party tomorrow night. Lizzie asks Mike whether they should tell William, invite him to the party tomorrow night so he can see Evan one last time. But Mike says he still doesn’t trust William and says it would be better if they kept this whole thing quiet from him. Besides, William probably wouldn’t believe them, Mike says. Mike then comments on the stupid bucket one last time before they leave.
Before the 5th night, we get one last flashback scene. Mike has won custody of Lizzie, so he comes back to the house to pick her up and take her away. They both say goodbye to William, who acts like he couldn’t care less now. Mike tries to apologise for what he did to Evan one last time, but William doesn’t respond.
On the 5th night, Mike and Lizzie return to the pizzeria to find that their party scene has been completely trashed and the animatronics are nowhere to be seen. What happened? Then, someone in the Spring Bonnie suit comes out of the shadows, moving threateningly towards them. They take off the mask, and we see that it’s William! He then reveals all; he was the one who killed those kids, and messed up the security footage so the police couldn’t pin it on him. He’s been observing the animatronics all this time, fascinated by the fact they’re possessed. He also reveals that he gave Mike the job because he had hoped the animatronics would kill him, so he could have sweet revenge on Mike for what he did to Evan. When William realised that Mike and Lizzie wanted to help release the spirits, he decided to come here to end things himself. He doesn’t want that to happen because he is determined to ‘fix’ Evan, who’s possessing Golden Freddy.
This all leads to a massive chase/stealth scene. Lizzie hides from William in the arcade and ball pit (instead of hiding from Foxy in the original movie). I imagine William would get really creepy in this scene. Saying things like ‘be a good little girl, come to Daddy, I know you didn’t mean to abandon me, this is all Michael’s fault, once I get rid of him, you, me and Evan can be a happy family again, our family will finally be whole again’, stuff like that. William eventually gives up stalking Lizzie when Mike gets his attention, and he leads William away from Lizzie.
While William then chases Mike, Lizzie finds the animatronics hiding. She realises they are terrified of William, but she gives them a pep talk and helps them realise that they are stronger now than they were before. They aren’t little kids anymore; they can fight back and stop him. Finally, the animatronics then back William into a corner, stopping him from harming Mike. As William tries his best to scare the kids into not attacking him, Mike suddenly remembers how the springlock suits clamp up when exposed to water, like how it did with Evan. He grabs the old bucket full of water and throws it at William (and finally the bucket reveals its true purpose!). The suit’s locks start clamping into William’s body, killing him.
I imagine the scene playing out similar to Naraz –5000’s ‘Purple guy death sound’, an infamous YouTube video made by a FNAF fan, imagining what William would have sounded like dying in the springlock suit. There’s a link to the clip at the bottom of this article, but I warn you, do not watch it if you’re squeamish. The voice acting is incredibly realistic and disturbing!
Mike, Lizzie and the animatronics then finally have the birthday party for Evan and the other animatronics, and finally their spirits are released to the afterlife. They have a teary goodbye with Evan’s spirit, with Evan telling Mike that he forgives him. Mike then locks William’s body, still in the suit, in the backroom before they leave the pizzeria behind forever. But just as they leave and the film ends, the suit jumps to life...
And there you have it! That’s my version of what the FNAF movie could have looked like, if you based it more on the original games. I hope you enjoyed reading this, and I hope you can forgive me for my comments about the actual FNAF movie. Thanks for reading and happy Halloween!