According to an interview Tammi did with Entertainment Weekly, the animatronics also had a creepy tendency to make movements of their own volition. “They did have a life of their own at times,” the filmmaker told EW, explaining that “Each of the different [moving parts] on the animatronic was puppeteered by a different person.” Tammi said eyes, arms, ears, and jaws were each controlled by a different puppeteer, plus in-suit actors are also credited in the movie. With so many people making the monsters come to life, there were bound to be some moments in which they started to seem a little too real.
“I remember standing next to one of the puppeteers with a remote control in their hand and the animatronic all of a sudden twitched its eye,” Tammi told the outlet. “I looked at the puppeteer and I was like, ‘Did you do that?’ And she said, ‘No.'” With a laugh, the filmmaker joked that the puppet “just needed to let us know it was alive.” Seems chill and not at all like a situation that would haunt my nightmares! Of course, Tammi’s kidding about the puppets being alive, but she says that with a movie like this one, the crew took puppet-related mishaps in stride. After all, a puppet with a creepy sentient eye is more a feature than a bug when it comes to “Five Nights at Freddy’s.” “They are imperfect, and wonderfully so, and definitely we embraced the quirks when they would do stuff that we didn’t necessarily command them to do exactly,” she told EW.
“Five Nights at Freddy’s” is now in theaters, but it’s also streaming on Peacock if you prefer to watch at home.
