Five Nights at Freddy's director explains how they push the PG-13 rating
Frights for the whole family
You might not know this, but the majority of the Five Nights at Freddy’s franchise is rated T for Teen by the ESRB. There is only one entry in the series that was rated Mature, so knowing that, it seems quite fitting that the upcoming Five Nights at Freddy’s film went for a PG-13 rating as well. That said, the limits of what’s allowed in a PG-13 movie were certainly pushed.
In an interview with Inverse, Five Nights at Freddy’s director Emma Tammi explained not only why the team decided to go for a PG-13 rating, but also how they pushed up against what you’d normally expect to see in a film with that rating.
We were trying to push it as far as we could while still retaining that PG-13 rating. That meant the kills needed to be executed in a certain way. And while it is so fun in many slasher films to see all the guts and the gore, it is also really fun to figure out creative ways to show these moments without showing all the details. In some cases, we leaned into shadows and silhouettes and sound design to really feel the moment in an impactful way without showing any gore. So that is something that I had a lot of fun doing, and actually really appreciated that we were taking the PG-13 approach for this because there’s such a younger audience for FNAF, and we didn’t want to exclude them.
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