Five Nights at Freddy’s — Dreamwork to navigate the unconscious and a murderous teddy bear

Let’s talk about Five Nights at Freddy’s (2023) and its portrayal of the personal unconscious through dreams.

K so the reason I went to see this movie is because Matthew Lillard is in it and I think he is one of THE BEST horror film actors of all time and I will see anything he is in. But I was SO pleasantly surprised at how much I liked this movie! I immediately saw that this movie was about the navigation of trauma through dreamwork and Jungian archetypes — AND there were adorable murderous animatronic critters who love pizza and singing songs so like… what’s there not to like?

Mental Health is Horrifying is hosted by Candis Green, owner of Many Moons Therapy.

Podcast artwork by Chloe Hurst from Contempomint.
..............................................................

Sources:

Order The Horror Concierge: A Mental Health and Horror Tarot Readings + Film Reco. Order yours HERE.

Hey final girls — I have an exciting group experience coming in the new year that will guide you through dreamwork exploration. Sign up for my newsletter to be the first to know when this launches.

Consciousness and the Unconscious: Lectures Delivered at ETH Zurich, Volume 2: 1934 by C.G. Jung and Ernst Falzeder

Jung's Model of the Psyche by Ann Hopwood

Five Nights At Freddy's Breaks Major Horror Movie Box Office Record Of 2023 by Nick Bythrow

Five Nights at Freddy’s, the cult horror game turned movie, explained by Aja Romano

What Is Dream Theory and How Does It Work in Five Nights at Freddy's? by Cassidy Ward

Dreams: (From Volumes 4, 8, 12, and 16 of the Collected Works of C. G. Jung) by C.G. Jung

Dictionary of Symbolism: Cultural Icons and the Meanings Behind Them by Hans Biedermann

Transcript

Welcome ghouls to today’s episode of Mental Health is Horrifying. I’m your Horror Barbie host of darkness — Candis Green— Psychotherapist and all around spooky bitch podcasting from my bat-filled cave in Toronto, Canada. On today’s episode, I’m going to be talking about those cute (although posessed) animatronic critters from your favourite Chuck E. Cheese spinoff location — Five Nights at Freddy’s. 

I knew virtually nothing about this movie when I decided to go see it recently. I just heard that Matthew Lillard was in it and I was like “sign me up!” From his legendary work as maaaaaaaaybe the best Ghostface (next to Billy Loomis) Stu Macher in Scream, to being Shaggy in Scooby Doo, and everyone’s favourite idiot boyfriend Brock Hudson in She’s All That, Matthew Lillard is a gift to the world and I will see anything he is in. But I was so pleasantly surprised at how much I liked this movie! I immediately saw that this movie was about the navigation of trauma through dreamwork AND there were adorable murderous animatronic critters who love pizza and singing songs so like… what’s there not to like?

Okay so let’s get right into it. Let’s talk about Five Nights at Freddy’s (2023) and it’s portrayal of the personal unconscious through dreams. 

Movie synopsis:

We begin by finding ourselves at Freddy Fazbear's Pizza, a once-successful but now abandoned family entertainment centre, must like Chuck E. Cheese, where a night security guard desperately attempts to flee from an unseen force but is captured and strapped to a torture device, which mutilates his face and kills him. Sooo.. something is up with this place.

Later, mall security guard Mike Schmidt played by Josh Hutcherson is fired after assaulting a negligent father whom he mistook for a kidnapper. We later discover that Mike’s own brother, Garrett, was kidnapped as as a child by a man, shedding some light on Mike’s over-zealous response to a perceived childnapper who just turned out to be the guy’s father. Whoopsie! Mike gets hooked up with a career counselor Steve Raglan (it’s Matthew Lillard!), offers him a job as a night guard at the abandoned Freddy Fazebear’s. Weird… Though initially reluctant, Mike accepts after social services threaten to take custody of his younger sister Abby and pass her over to their estranged aunt Jane, who sucks.

During his first night on the job, Mike falls asleep and dreams about his brother, Garett. He sees the day of his kidnapping in the dream, and screams after him as he his driven away in a car by an unseen assailant. He meets five children who witnessed the crime, but who run away when he approaches them. On the second night, Mike has the same dream, but when he attempts to confront one of the children, he is attacked, causing him to awaken. On her nightly rounds, Mike Mike meets police officer Vanessa Shelly, who tells him a bit about Freddy’s, including that it closed during the 1980s after five children were murdered there, but the suspect nor the victims' bodies were never found.

Meanwhile, Jane hires a gang which includes Abby's babysitter Max to vandalize the restaurant in order to get Mike fired and hasten Jane's gaining custody of Abby. The gang breaks in once Mike leaves his shift, but the restaurant's animatronic mascots—Freddy Fazbear, Bonnie, Chica, Foxy, and Mr. Cupcake—come alive and murder the entire group. This is really inconvenient for Mike because now he doesn’t have a babysitter for Abby. So annoying. So he decides to bring Abby along to his next shift.

On the third night, the animatronics come alive and befriend Abby. They have a blast! They sing, they make forts, the have hugs. It’s so cute. Mike becomes concerned though once he discovers that the animatronics are possessed by the ghosts of the missing children, whose leader, a young blond boy, consistently mentions a "yellow rabbit". 

Despite knowing this, Mike and Vanessa play with the animatronic murders on the fourth night alongside Abby. Mike is dong this, however, in an attempt to identify Garrett’s kidnapper, and Vanessa cryptically cautions him not to bring Abby to the restaurant again.

So on the fifth night she stays home with mean aunt Jane, while the children appear in Mike's recurring dream, an alternate scenario to the incident of Garrett's kidnapping, and tell him that he can stay with Garrett forever, in exchange for Abby. Mike initially accepts their proposal, but when he changes his mind, he is attacked by Foxy and wakes up injured and strapped to the torture device. He escapes, but meanwhile Foxy somehow got an Uber or whatever to go pick up Abby ad bring her to Freddy’s, but not before he murders mean Aunt Jane. Bye Jane!

Back at Freddy’s, Vanessa reveals that she is the daughter of William Afton, the serial killer who murdered Garrett and the five children by hiding their bodies in the animatronics and that their souls are under his control. You’re telling me this NOW, Vanessa?!

After a struggle, Mike and Vanessa manage to de-activate the animatronics, but jk they are reactivated by the "yellow rabbit” as he reveals himself to be Steve, whose real identity is William who is actually Matthew Lillard, who is one of the best horror movie villain actors of all time don’t at me.

As William knocks Mike unconscious, Abby draws a picture of William murdering the missing children in order to free the animatronics from his influence. Vanessa attempts to stop William from proceeding with his plan, but he stabs his own daughter! Stone cold! 

Before William can finish off Mike, Abby shows her drawing to the animatronics, and they turn on him. Mr. Cupcake bites off part of William's suit, triggering its internal springlock mechanisms which begin taking in his body as part of the suit.

Vanessa is in the hospital and Mike and Abby return to their normal lives. We end with the blond boy locking a dying William, still trapped in his yellow rabbit suit, in a room inside the restaurant. 

Movie background info:

I cannot talk about this movie without talking about its origins as a video game franchise that has experienced wild success over the years. The game, Five Nights at Freddy’s, became an immediate hit when it was initially released in 2014, lauded for its simplicity in employing nostalgic horror tropes that just hit — abandoned attractions, spooky kid’s toys that seem fun and cute but turn murderous, a somewhat cheesy super villain, and jump scares!

The franchise, created by Scott Cawthon, has had a huge impact on gaming fandom and YouTube culture, and epitomized the now-ubiquitous popularity of games that keep their audiences guessing, not just about what’s going to happen, but about what it all means. The game’s ability to worldbuild while taking you through a standard horror scenario only grew over the years, through a staggering eight main games including one in virtual reality, five spinoff games, dozens of books and graphic novels, and now the movie directed by Emma Tammi.

The game has developed its own kind of lore, and even in my research for this episode I came across endless Reddit threads and wiki pages with theories about the the hidden mysteries, symbols, and meanings within the franchise. Which is honestly what I love so much about the horror genre. It’s for the fans! No surprise that critics were not the biggest fan of this movie, as I find often that horror (unless it’s something arty by A24 or whatever) gets so much flack from critics, but fans LOVED this movie and it slayed at the box office, completely obliterating box office expectations and to date earning over $215 million globally in its first two weeks of release, becoming the highest grossing horror film of 2023 in that period. Which is absolutely wild because 2023 was a pretty big year for box office horror, with the release of popular films like M3GAN, Talk To Me, Saw X, The Nun 2, Insidious: The Red Door, and Exorcist: Believer. This is why I never pay attention to horror film reviews by critics because it’s not FOR them, it’s for us spooky bitches! Director Emma Tammi was really mindful to respect the original fanbase, while bringing in new elements to the film.

The movie seems to have picked up where Nightmare on Elm Street left off with respect to a child murderer who is somehow able to transcend dreams and reality in his reign of terror. And, of course, the lead villain shares a name with Freddy Krueger. The movie appears to be set in the early 90s, with flashbacks to the 80s that also give some Elm Street vibes. I love it when horror movies reference each other and acknowledge the impact that the genres has had through the decades.

The art direction and critter creation in this movie is really amazing, transporting me right back to my 11th birthday party at Chuck E Cheese. I obviously made all my friends dress in Halloween costumes. I was a witch. I remember a giant animatronic rat, duck, purple people eater type guy, and dog just rocking out on stage in all their robotic glory, being completely taken by this magic. At the time, Chuck E Cheese also had the BEST pizza I had ever tasted in my life. I remember the frenetic joy of playing whack a mole, the wild bruises I got on my knees from crawling through Sky Tubes, and the glory I felt when I finally earned enough tickets to trade them in for a magnetic turtle who still lives on my fridge today. 

So — what an amazing concept, to turn this most joyous of childhood places into the setting for a horror movie, where those adorable animatronic friends aren’t cute and cuddly but murderous! And the whole place had to be shut down because that entire time, it wasn’t being run by some sweet cartoon rat named Chucky, but a nefarious child murderer who hid the bodies in the animatronic critters. Eeeek! Childhood is such a vulnerable time and great horror movies unnerve us by finding the places where we think we’re safe — like our homes, fond childhood memories, and dreams — and pokes holes in any idea of safety at all! 


Dream Theory in Five Nights at Freddy’s:

Similar to Nightmare on Elm Street, Five Nights at Freddy’s sees its protagonist straddling both his conscious and unconscious realms, lucid dreaming in an attempt to save the brother who was taken from him many years ago.

Mike is tormented by this event. During a dream, we see Mike on a camping trip with his family — mom, dad, and little brother Garrett — when mom accidentally spills soda everywhere and asks Mike to watch his little brother while mom cleans ups. 
Mike suddenly sees his brother in the back of a car, starring out the back window, being driven away. Mike calls after him, chases after the car, but he cannot save him and Garrett, nor his kidnapper, are ever seen again. 

The trauma of losing his brother follows Mike throughout his life, as we see when he responds this place when he attacks a man in the mall who he wrongly believes is kidnapping a child. We understand that Mike has had a difficult life, struggling to hold down a job and make ends meet, while also looking after his sister Abby all on his own since his mother passed away a few years back, and his father left, unable to cope with the weight of it all. 

Mike is unable to accept his brother’s kidnapping and dedicates his life to discovering who took him. He has a book called Dream Theory that he has become obsessed with, hoping that it will unlock the key to his unconscious realm which holds the secret to who took his brother.

 A line from the book reads “And though the dreamer remains asleep, he walks through memory as if experiencing it for the first time anew, no longer a passenger but an active participant.” 

Dream Theory, as presented in Five Nights at Freddy’s, suggests that our minds absorb much more information than are conscious minds can comprehend or hold. Our memories, expressed through dreams from this perspective, are places we can revisit to try to uncover details not available in our waking lives. Mike believes that if can continue revisiting those memories in his dreams, he will be able to reveal details that he cannot recall, helping to solve the mystery of his brother’s abduction.

But as is the case with many who experience severe trauma or perhaps PTSD in Mike’s case, he struggles to sleep, so he takes sleeping pills each night to help submerge him into a place where he might find hist lost brother again. 


The Conscious vs. Unconscious:

While the book on Dream Theory in Five Nights at Freddy’s is fictitious, it is based on very real theories of the personal unconscious and dreamwork presented by famed psychoanalyst Carl Jung. In Jung’s model of the psyche, he describes the human psyche as the totality of all psychic processes, conscious as well as unconscious. He employs the term “psyche” rather than “mind”, because the mind is often used to refer to aspects of mental functioning which are conscious. 

Jung believed that the human psyche was made up of three basic components — the conscious or the ego, the personal unconscious, and the collective unconscious. Within those layers are archetypes that organize how we experience things. 

The ego, or the conscious realm, is all about how you see and understand yourself in relation to the world. It’s who we present ourselves as in society. Within this, we find the persona. This is the version of ourselves that we share with the world when we go to the coffee shop, have little interactions out in the world, and it’s the one that knows how to follow the rules that society has laid out. The persona develops as a social mask to contain all of the primitive urges, impulses, and emotions that are not considered socially acceptable. 

According to Jung, the conscious realm, makes up only a very small fraction of what we experience as humans; with the unconscious holding even deeper layers of meaning, and parts of self. Our unconscious realm is vast, and it is constantly experiencing and storing things within its layers. Whereas the collective unconscious refers to universal symbols and knowledge that represent common human experiences and emotions (things like “death is scary” and “puppies are cute”), the personal unconscious is just that — specific to the experiences of the individual. It contains a large variety of emotions and memories that the person has rejected or repressed.

As people live in their conscious state, they are unable to reach their personal unconscious, but it appears when they are in hypnotic states, such as while dreaming.

The personal unconscious holds archetypes of its own, including the shadow. The shadow is composed of repressed ideas, weaknesses, desires, instincts, and shortcomings.

The shadow forms out of our attempts to adapt to cultural norms and expectations. It is this archetype that contains all of the things that are unacceptable not only to society, but also to one's own personal morals and values. It might include things such as envy, greed, prejudice, hate, and aggression.

This archetype is often described as the darker side of the psyche, representing wildness, chaos, and the unknown. These latent dispositions are present in all of us, although people sometimes deny this element of their own psyche and instead project it on to others.


Personality Archetypes:

So the fact that Freddy, the lead killer critter, is a bear is very interesting to me from the perspective that he may be a symbol of Mike’s shadow. In Jungian psychology, dream symbolism interprets the bear as an embodiment of the dangerous or uncontrollable aspects of the unconscious. From his first encounter with Freddy, Mike feels an ominous sense about him and knows to keep his guard up. As a reflection of Mike’s own shadow and repressed rage, impotence, shame, and violence, Freddy embodies the repressed parts that Mike is tasked with facing in order to create a more unified sense of self through the resolution of his traumatized parts, which is achieved by bringing the unconscious into conscious awareness. 

Jung also defined 12 archetypes of personality, which are created through the symbols and myths of many different cultures. These archetypes represent behaviour patterns that make up different ways of being that exist in the collective unconscious. One of those archetypes is the Hero, who overcomes obstacles to defeat the monster of darkness; it is the long-hoped-for and expected triumph of consciousness over the unconscious. We can witness Mike as the Hero archetype in Five Nights at Freddy’s, while also seeing other archetypes present within him including the Everyman, the Caregiver, the Explorer, and the Rebel. Because like all of us, we are never just one thing, and we can embody and possess various archetypes as dynamic parts of self. 

Abby, and Garrett for that matter, are Innocents according to Jung’s personality archetypes but like… how do we place Vanessa? Is it just me or does Vanessa kind of suck?! Like girl — why did you wait so long to tell Mike what was going on, and just let him and his sister play with these big evil killer critters who have killed like… so many people… like who even knows how many security guards right?! And these critters are possessed by dead children who were killed BY THE WAY BY YOUR FATHER WHO YOU NEVER GAVE UP TO THE POLICE WHO YOU NOW WORK FOR?! Is Vanessa Jung’s Jester? As in she’s a total joke? I don’t know what Jung would make of her, but for real Vanessa sucks. 


Dreamwork:

Shadow work has become quite popular today in pop psychology, but that shadow — it’s a tricky thing!  The shadow is often cloaked in shame (or a bear), making it even more difficult to recognize, access, and work with on a conscious level. Our psyches are smart, and are adept at developing defences to shield us from our more intolerable parts of self. We project, we deny, we avoid, and we distract. And for good reason — revealing the shadow — to others but even just to ourselves — puts us at risk for horrible rejection, misunderstanding, shame, and ostracization. The unconscious can be worked with in a number of ways including through talk therapy, and another way we can access it is through dreamwork. 

The shadow often presents itself in dreams through symbols and metaphors. You see — even in dreams it’s trying to hide! In dreams, there is no manipulation of the experience to conform with what the individual or society wants it to be. That’s why dreams are often non-sensical, strange, mysterious, and even unsettling. In Jung's own words, he saw dreams as "a spontaneous self-portrayal in symbolic form of the actual situation in the unconscious." As such, the dream itself is the source of new information and greater understanding. 

Before I get into the different types of dreams, I encourage every single person in the whole entire world to keep a dream journal. Keeping a dream journal is a way to intentionally work with your dreams and actively work to uncover the hidden meanings behind the symbols, messages, and memories they share with you. We think that our lives are all that we experience with our five senses on the conscious realm, but there is so much more to our lives that what we can see with in our waking lives. 

There are several different types of dreams which I’ll go over briefly, and talk about how Mike engages with most of these forms of dreams in Five Nights at Freddy’s. I’ll also share insight into how you can work with each type of dream.

The first type, and one that Mike definitely experiences in the movie, are recurrent dreams are dreams that you seem to experience over and over again. It may be the exact same dream, the same feeling, or the same symbols revealing themselves to you night after night, perhaps even for years. Recurrent dreams are often experienced by those who have experienced traumatic incidents as a way for the unconscious to try and make sense of and resolve the trauma. To work with recurrent dreams ask yourself — is something happening in my life right now that happened in the past? Are there synchronicities here? Consider that the dream keep recurring because there may be a symbol or message that your unconscious is trying to get you to recognize that you haven’t quite gotten yet. 

Prophetic or prospective dreams are what I like to refer to as the spooky kind because the seem to overflow into the future and can hold potential warnings or things to look out for. Mike learns in his dream that the critters wish to take Abby as one of their own. I guess you could say that Mike experiences prophetic dreams because like, he gets stabbed in his dream and then he gets stabbed at Freddy’s! 

False awakenings are totally annoying types of dreams where you have a dream within a dream, or literally wake up but you don’t because your’e still dreaming, and can often act as an invitation to lucid dream.

Lucid dreams are dreams in which the dreamer becomes aware that they are dreaming while in the dream and can begin to engage with it. It is said that lucid dreaming is something that you can learn how to do through things like meditation and goal-setting, and we see Mike actively intending to lucid dream night after night in the film, as he attempts to speak to the children each time to ask them if they know anything about his brother’s disappearance. A word of caution for lucid dreaming, however. By asserting conscious control in the unconscious realm, you risk bypassing the dream’s wisdom. Perhaps if Mike paid closer attention to the symbols present with the children themselves… like animal ears? Or a hook hand exactly like Foxy? He may have realized… the kids ARE the animatronic critters!

Incubative dreams are dreams that offer us seeds of guidance to carry throughout the day. For example, perhaps you dreamt about talking to that cute guy you always see at the gym. You did it in the dream and it actually went pretty well so you’re like… you know what, I am going to talk to Chet today. He’s so dreamy.

Luminous dreams are those that can help light up our darkest times, offering hope and spiritual solace. Mike… does not experience this. Things are overall pretty grim for him.

Dreamwork can be supported through other tools of unconscious exploration including meditation, tarot, and guided visualizaiton. Working with the unconscious requires intentionality and space — lots and lots of space — in a world that is positively filled with candy for the ego. 

Hey final girls — I have an exciting group experience coming in the new year that will guide you through dreamwork exploration. Sign up for my newsletter on my website manymoonstherapy.com to be the first to know when this launches.

Conclusion: 

It is said that the Self is achieved through the unification of the unconscious and conscious realms of the individual. Jung often represented the self as a circle— in other words, whole.

In the end, did Mike achieve self-actualization? I think he did, as we see him at the end being more open to Abby, being able to take her in and be fully present in his life. He is open to the possibility of Vanessa — which is honestly more than I can say for myself because I hate that bitch so like, maybe Mike is more evolved than I am! I’ve said this before, but I struggle with the word “healed” because for me it suggested arriving at some kind of destination. And I don’t believe we ever arrive. Mike will never get over the loss of his brother, and the subsequent havoc it unleashed upon his family. But that’s not what self-actualization is. It means being aware of our shadow, our traumas, our past, our hurts, and the parts of ourselves that we absolutely hate and are even ashamed of, and integrating them into ourselves. Accepting them and living alongside them — warts and all. 

Outro:

And that my ghouls is the story of Five Nights at Freddy’s. Thank you for journeying into the depths with me today and I hope to find you in the darkness again soon. 

Visit my website manymoonstherapy.com to order The Horror Concierge — A Mental Health and Horror Tarot Reading and Film Reco. If you live in Ontario and are interested in psychotherapy with me, I offer tarot x talk therapy or just talk therapy sessions. Be sure to sign up for my newsletter to be the first to know about cool stuff that I’m doing like my new group experience coming in the new year. You can follow me on Instagram at @manymoonstherapy and you can also learn more about me and my services through my website manymoonstherapy.com. 

OR you can also howl at the moon and I will hear your call.

Bright blessings.