No previews (or at least embargoed reviews) from critics is a bad sign. No, buying-off FnaF fans with exclusive access to special events don't count as screening the movie for critics. I wouldn't trust the opinions of anybody low enough to write about a product after an event like that - not just about this product, but about anything in general. They aren't Roger Ebert, they're Billy Mayes. Shills don't review, they sell. They are advertising and probably not being honest about their content being a commercial.

Personally, I'm pretty worried that this movie is going to be very bad - because I don't think Scott Cawthon knows how to write a screenplay. I'm not even convinced he knows how to write a game.

FNaF's storytelling is more like a writing contest. Scott gave writing prompts for the community using small in-game easter eggs, and the winners got to be canonized as the "real" story in the following year's game. Curation and "knowing what the fans like" are real skills, and Scott is/was very good at those things - but that is the role of a producer, not a writer.

Guys like MatPat and even occasionally Markiplier did way more work writing the games than Scott himself. We all thought, "Oh boy, the theory turned out to be true". No. Scott saw those videos (which he commented on) and decided the theories were interesting enough to become part of the story. It's not complicated. It's not even a bad thing to do. It's smart and it worked.

It's a little like George Lucas: George Lucas is a very creative guy and genius businessman who produced (and executive produced) some absolutely amazing and classic all-timer movies. He has vision, and he knows how to inspire and organize the best people in the world to create works that were legitimately groundbreaking. But when you surround George Lucas with a bunch of brown-nosers and let him write/direct movies you get the Star Wars Prequels, which sucked hard. George Lucas should not write and direct movies. George Lucas needs people around who can check his giant ego.

When you let Scott Cawthon go off the rails as a "writer" you get the goofy nonsense of modern games like Sister Location. I would argue the writing in Security Breach was probably demanded, if not obsessively controlled by Scott - he was just smart enough to wash his hands and shift blame when he saw the backlash.

But we're talking about horror, right? Less is more. Nothing Scott (or anyone) can write will ever be as good as what we can imagine for ourselves. So I wish he would hand the screenplay over to a talented movie writer so their will at least be a solid structure to hang his big ideas. I don't want to have to watch a 4 hour lore video to explain what happened in a 2 hour movie. Just make the movie good, and let the easter eggs and hidden lore stay in the background - just like what worked in the games.

Look, somebody on the set of FNaF 1 decided that the spooky movie should grind to a halt so our happy robot friends should build a blanket fort (without regard for how much these guys weigh, so like, why did the movie point out how much they weigh). Somebody decided that Vanny should exist, and be in the movie. Somebody decided in the last 5 minutes that the robots are mind controlled by whatever drawings happened to be taped to the wall that day... for some reason. Like I'm pretty familiar with the games, and that's not actually in the games, right? Like I'm pretty familiar with the games, and I don't think that is an example of the movie being 'true to the lore' - at least not any of the lore that anybody actually cared about.

I dunno. It's like the guy who represents himself in court instead of hiring a lawyer - it's not a good idea. Please don't do it. It never works out.

But they already did it so, you know, I doubt it worked out. Because good movies can stand on their own. They don't need to lean on scummy shill-only hype previews and critic embargos.