Five Nights at Freddy's (FNAF) was dubbed the worst-rated video game movie of the last seven years thanks to its dismal Rotten Tomatoes rating.
The FNAF film marks the end of a stellar year when it comes to video game adaptations.
Hits like The Super Mario Bros. Movie and HBO's The Last of Us (TLOU) proved that these often ill-fated translations from home consoles to the big or small screen could prove successful both critically (in TLOU's case) and financially (in Mario's case).
And given FNAF's seemingly ready-made premise set for horror greatness, the Blumhouse film felt primed to be another great video game movie. However, that does not seem to be the case with early reviews calling the film "cheap," "lazy," and "predictable."
FNAF Is the Worst Video Game Movie in 7 Years
The Five Nights at Freddy's movie debuted on Rotten Tomatoes (RT) with a meager 26%.
This grim Tomatometer score makes FNAF the worst video game film adaptation since 2016's Assassin's Creed, which released to a lean 18% on the review aggregation platform.
If one were to remove Assassin's Creed from the equation, the FNAF's score would have been the worst with both other video game films from 2016 (Warcraft and Ratchet & Clank) performing better on RT than FNAF.
For comparison, just this year, there were three other video game movies (Tetris, The Super Mario Bros Movie, and Gran Turismo), all of which outpaced FNAF by an average margin of 42 points on the RT scale.
The closest something came to FNAF's terrible RT score came with 2021's Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City - which came in at 30% on the Tomatometer. But even that was rated four percent higher than Five Nights at Freddy's.
For a full list of video game movies from the last seven years and their Rotten Tomatoes score to compare, see below:
- Ratchet & Clank (2016) - 22%
- Warcraft (2016) - 29%
- Assassin’s Creed (2016) - 18%
- The Angry Birds Movie (2016) - 44%
- Resident Evil: The Final Chapter (2017) - 38%
- Tomb Raider (2018) - 53%
- Rampage (2018) - 51%
- Pokémon: Detective Pikachu (2019) - 68%
- The Angry Birds Movie 2 (2019) - 73%
- Sonic the Hedgehog (2020) - 63%
- Monster Hunter (2020) - 44%
- Mortal Kombat (2021) - 55%
- Werewolves Within (2021) - 86%
- Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City (2021) - 30%
- Uncharted (2022) - 40%
- Sonic the Hedgehog 2 (2022) - 69%
- Tetris (2023) - 82%
- The Super Mario Bros. Movie (2023) - 59%
- Gran Turismo (2023) - 65%
- Five Nights at Freddy's (2023) - 21%
Will Anything Break FNAF's Rotten Tomatoes Record?
While FNAF did not break the low watermark set by the Assassin's Creed seven years ago, it still could.
Things are still settling out on Five Nights at Freddy's Rotten Tomatoes page since the film is still new. As time goes on, the score could fluctuate. But - unless something crazy happens - the film will likely remain one of the biggest video game movie misses in recent memory.
Its reign may not be all that long, though. Looking ahead at the calendar, there are a couple of candidates for video game adaptations that could steal its (or even Assassin's Creed's) crown.
The next video game movie with a date is December 2024's Sonic the Hedgehog 3. While the first film was a mixed bag, Sonic 2 was generally well-liked. So it seems unlikely the blue blur's threequel would be the one to unseat FNAF.
The two movies that feel like they have this sort of critical flop potential are Borderlands and Minecraft: The Movie.
The long-gestating Borderlands film has been through a lot. It has seemingly been finished for quite some time, despite its director leaving the project and for some reshoots earlier in 2023.
While the Borderlands franchise feels like it could make for a fun enough big-screen comedy, it is not hard to imagine a world where this movie is a critical miss.
And when it comes to Jason Momoa's Minecraft, there are just so many question marks about what this film is that it feels primed to be critically maligned.
Five Nights at Freddy's is in theaters and streaming on Peacock now.
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