Five Nights at Freddy’s (2023) | Episode #92

In this episode, hosts Katherine Troyer and Toni Tresca work the graveyard shift as they discuss the 2023 horror film Five Nights at Freddy's. 

Episode Highlights: Toni shares what it was like playing the game on band trips as a kid and how this shaped their anticipation and hopes for this film. We talk about the challenges this film faced and--in our opinions--did not overcome as the movie tries to appeal to both current kids and adults who remembered the game from their own childhoods. We look at the film's establishment of a world beyond Freddy Fazbear's Pizzeria and how this worldbuilding aspect of the film, along with the backstory it built about the murdered children, affected the horror of this story. And we explore what we think this film could have been in its best incarnation. 

A Dose of Scholarship: While there isn't any scholarship on the film, there is some interesting scholarship on the Five Nights at Freddy's games. We encourage you to check out Betsy Brey's chapter "Five Nights at Fan Games: Feminism, Fan Labor, and Five Nights at Freddy's" in the 2020 book Indie Games in the Digital Age. Another essay worth looking at is Yujie Ji and Yixuan Zhao's 2022 "Follow the Purple Bunny: A Brief Analysis of Five Nights at Freddy's Narrative." And there are a couple of pieces written about the film that proved helpful in our discussion: Michael Cripe's "Five Nights at Freddy's Surpasses Split to Break a Record for Horror Studio Blumhouse" and Jesse Hassenger's "The Five Nights at Freddy's Movie is a Dizzying Mashup of Decades of Culture."

This podcast episode first aired on February 16, 2024.

Deepest of appreciation to Jackson O'Brien...thank you for editing this podcast!

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