A & E

Critical Critics

Wallace Gilreath • December 21, 2023

“Fans of the video game of the same name will know what’s possible in this spin-off movie, but anyone approaching it as just another horror film might be confounded, 1/5 stars” (Edward Porter, Sunday Times)

Just 2 months ago, the Five Nights at Freddy’s movie made a jaw dropping 130 Million Dollars internationally for its opening weekend. The movie is now the third highest grossing horror movie opening weekend, falling just behind IT 1 and 2. But despite it being a smash hit with audiences, scoring an 89%on rotten tomatoes, movie critics were less pleased with the movie, only giving it a 29% on rotten tomatoes.

This same scenario happened last May with regards to The Super Mario movie. While the audience gave the movie a 95%, and is so far the second highest grossing movie of 2023 (First place belongs to Barbie), critics gave the movie a 59%, with many making jabs at the movie’s script, saying that it feels only aimed towards kids.

Countless other movies suffer the same fate, being insulted by critics only for moviegoers to disagree. Venom, the live action The Little Mermaid, National Treasure, and Black Adam all have respectable audience scores while critics hate the movies.

Between Five Nights At Freddy’s and Mario, there seems to be a clear link: the audience the film was made for. Jason Blum, the producer of the Five Nights At Freddy’s movie said in an interview that the Five Nights at Freddy’s movie was “for fans of Five Nights at Freddy’s and, if anyone else came along, fine.” The audience, who came to the movie because they were fans of it, enjoyed it for the references to the games and in general the fact that the franchise they have loved for years finally has a movie. The critics -that are only watching the movies because they have to – , did not “get” the movie in the same way the fans did.

In the same vein, the Mario movie was made for young children who play the games, and older fans who have been playing Mario their whole lives. Critics did complain about the movie for being childish because it WAS childish, with a dose of nostalgia for everyone.

Critics base their careers on telling us what movies are well made, but in reality it’s not always the quality of the movie that matters to the people seeing it. If The Five Nights At Freddy’s movie was the worst movie of all time, or the best movie of the decade, it was always going to get a good audience score, because the fans of Freddys have been waiting for this movie for eight years. Even here at The Owl, some people *Cough* Rapid recent reviews *Cough* do not understand the Five Nights at Freddy’s movie.

About the Contributor

Wallace Gilreath, Staff Writer

Wallace Gilreath is a senior at Boulder High School, who joined the newspaper as a writer this year for the first time, “I'm excited to try something new for my last year of high school” (Gilreath, 2024). He hopes to write articles about topics he and the rest of the school find interesting and engaging. He hopes to go to CU for psychology after high school. Outside of school, Wallace works at Noodles and Company and has won “Noodler of the Month” once. Wallace likes hiking in the mountains despite his brothers refusing to go with him. He also enjoys playing video games and watching movies with his family, his favorite movie being Everything Everywhere All at Once. Wallace firmly believes that purple grapes are better than green because they “Are just the classic grape” (Gilreath, 2024), and because the green grapes are “Coming for me, they're coming for me there gonna get me I know it know they're going to get me” (Gilreath, 2024).