Went into FNAF with low expectations and I'm glad I did. Any movie that looks THAT GOOD with legendary puppeteers creating characters that seem to have just been pulled directly from the games will have some huge drawback to it and that was the writing.
Also, when I hear "it's for the fans" coming from Hollywood of all places, I know something's up. Something got Disney-fied in order to have it appeal to a larger crowd that may water down the content.
The actors were great, LOVED Matthew Lillard and his Scream reference, the atmosphere is creepy when it needs to be and the animatronics were just perfect. The cameos and easter eggs made it so nice.
The storytelling sucks. BAD. Bad to the point that I'm going to have to sit down with my mother later after she watches it and SHOW her (because the movie has a problem with telling, not showing) what her granddaughter, my niece is actually in love with that the movie skips out on, that being the horror itself. This is a HORROR franchise and it's gotten soft over its continuation.
The script should have been given to someone who was a fan of the series, particularly the first three games (can't say the books as they seem to have their own premise), AND a horror movie buff. The movie forgets it's a horror movie and doesn't seem to know what it wants to be.
There are a lot of key pieces I would have changed to make it enjoyable for newcomers while simultaneously being for the fans:
-Make this a series and not a movie. Mike should be in jail by the end of the movie with all the stuff they glossed over. Cop gets gravely injured and he and his sister are the only witnesses? With Afton "dead" and locked away, who else could have done it? The woman he's in a custody battle with is lying dead on his floor AND he has a history of violence and drug use? Yeah. No. This needed more time to deal with its issues or be rewritten entirely which I am all for.
-Garrett's disappearance needed to have a DIRECT line to the pizzeria instead of happening in the middle of BFE Nebraska.
-Nix the dream crap. Mike should have been killed the first time he ever fell asleep in that place. Next security guard, please. Though, I will say, if he falls asleep or he loses consciousness, they could have Garrett communicate with him to give a couple of clues on what he needs to do next and warn him to stay away from the animatronics.
-Speaking of animatronics, they're vengeful spirits that should go after anything with a pulse. Or at least any adult with a blindness for faces. While I can excuse how they acted around Abby, I can't excuse it around Mike or Vanessa. They should get the same treatment the idiots who broke into the place did regardless of who they are.
-Utilize the cameras more to keep an air of mystery and horror going. Maybe have Mike chase some kid through the place like Max did only to go look back at the cameras to see that he wasn't chasing anything or if he sees a kid on the cameras, he goes to find them only to find the respective animatronic standing there instead. Lean harder into the paranormal aspect.
-Have Afton's motives actually explained. WHY was he doing this? What was his end goal of killing kids and putting them in suits? Yeah, it can be a simple answer, but not one given in the movie. Also, have him more involved in the plot. Have him physically haunting the place as Springtrap. Having Mike ask him "Why" and him answering "Why not?" would be fucked up as hell and mirror real-life child kidnappings/murders. Grieving families do ask the killers of their loved ones "Why?"
-Nix Vanessa. OG fans remember when we had to piece things together through visuals. Not exposition. Mike should find out about the other disappearances through articles and such, even Garrett's disappearance which he could be trying to solve, and stumbled upon a golden opportunity when he found a Craigslist ad for a Night Guard for the very place his brother went missing. Besides, Vanessa has her own lore that wouldn't be in play until later additions to the franchise. Nothing like finding out the body of a dead child is hiding in one of the animatronics by "injuring" the animatronic to keep up the horror aspect.
-I would have kept the family angle with Mike knowing Afton was his father, he just used "Mike Schmit" to get a job at the place his father is protective over to investigate instead of "Michael Afton", given how common "Schmit" is. Afton himself probably wouldn't recognize him unless face to face.
-Bring in Henry Emily. Give a red herring that maybe HE'S the one behind all of it. Have him investigate at the same time Mike is and neither trust each other with that information, causing them to suspect one another.
You see, this movie would have been ten times better if they used what was already there instead of using an entirely different story with the same characters. They could have used old cliches and made them work.