A workweek’s worth of graveyard shifts should offer ample time to convert an overwrought trauma plot into a congenial camp scare-fest. But although “Five Nights at Freddy’s,” based on a popular video game franchise, reaches for horror-comedy flair, this dreary, mild adaptation never achieves the hybrid pleasures of a movie like “M3gan.” You may chuckle, but it’s hard to tell if the movie is laughing with you.
Directed by Emma Tammi, “Five Nights” follows the morose Mike (Josh Hutcherson), whose trouble keeping employment has put him in danger of losing custody of his younger sister, Abby (Piper Rubio). Desperate, Mike accepts a mysterious gig as the sole security guard at the defunct and ramshackle Freddy Fazbear’s Pizza, a onetime playhouse showcasing animatronic animals.
One might expect that the movie’s built-in timeline amid these creepy machines would translate to a series of set pieces escalating in violence or alarm. Instead, the story takes more of a mystery route. On top of his immediate burdens, Mike is fixated on solving the long-ago kidnapping of his younger brother, and hopes that inducing REM sleep (even while on the job) will replay the memory in his dreams and turn up repressed details.
It’s a distressing back story, and Mike’s lingering pain sucks a lot of life out of what could have been an enjoyably eerie affair. The jump scares — hinging on fast cuts to close-ups — are often ineffective, and genre tropes abound: creepy, gawking children; a local policewoman (Elizabeth Lail) dispensing oblique warnings. Come to think of it, the cop’s apparently unlimited time to hang out at Freddy’s while on duty is a little frightening.
Five Nights at Freddy’s
Rated PG-13. Running time: 1 hour 50 minutes. In theaters and on Peacock.
