Five Nights At Freddy’s Continues Josh Hutcherson’s Unlikely Transformation Into Genre Movie Star

Dwayne Johnson, who was only then coming into his own as Franchise Viagra, replaced Fraser as Hutcherson’s father-figure in the sequel “Journey 2: The Mysterious Island,” and the result was (no surprise) a much more profitable film. You would be forgiven if you’d forgotten “Journey 2” even existed, though, seeing as “The Hunger Games” opened a month later. The smash-hit adaptation of Suzanne Collins’ best-selling dystopian YA novels and its sequels were the films that cemented Hutcherson’s onscreen persona thanks to his performance as Peeta Mellark, the modest, charismatic, bread-baking boy next door to Jennifer Lawrence’s fiery heroine (she is literally “The Girl On Fire”), Katniss Everdeen.

In terms of your craft, however, the real perk to playing one of the leads in an extremely popular film series is you can spend the years that follow subverting the very public image you’ve come to be associated with. Daniel Radcliffe’s had a blast doing that since his “Harry Potter” days, and Hutcherson has occasionally done something similar, hamming it up as a despicable criminal in Mike Gan’s comedy-thriller “Burn” and getting taken out in comically brutal fashion in director and co-writer Tyler MacIntyre’s well-received horror-comedy “Tragedy Girls.” The irreverent yet sophisticated Hulu series “Future Man,” on the other hand, saw Hutcherson return to his roots as an unassuming janitor who gets pulled into a real-life version of his favorite video game, but it was also a reminder of just how good he is at playing that archetype.

This brings us back to “Five Nights at Freddy’s,” which gives Hutcherson the chance to prove his bona fides as the hero in a horror film. With any luck, it will be to him what “The Evil Dead” was to Bruce Campbell.

“Five Nights at Freddy’s” hits theaters and Peacock on October 27, 2023.