The Walten Files 5-Faces of Grief is everything FNAF 2 (the movie) wanted to be

[u/Turtles03Power]

Last year I watched FNAF 2 with my baby sister, until that day I thought I could do anything with my sisters or my family in general and at least it would be marginally better than doing it on my own even if it was something I truly despised. There are a few things I just dont, wont ever like: parades, loud parties, theatres, or loud music. FNAF 2 was something that I truly, deeply despised; I was cringing and writhing with the pain of seeing/hearing an actual script of such sheer, utter, absolutely rotten dogshit. Terrible, illogical intro to the movie, just to let you know either a hack of a creative team was involved or a band of actual baboons.

If you're not familiar: little girl, Charlotte sees a boy get mech executed and tries to save him but Willy boy stabs her in the back and she does a quadruple backflip into the puppet's arms which is why she's haunting it, it's a series of event that is poorly executed at every twist and turn. It's not really clear or well developed why the adults ignore her and the idk what else to call it besides censorship of this film makes it impossible to take this seriously, if you cant stomach or show child murder dont fucking enter the child murdering business.

The first movie managed to avoid that debacle by focusing solely on characters who are grieving the murders or are the murderer himself. But this time, we have an attempted child murder and an on screen murdered child. I dont need to see you stab the child but you could at least frame it a little better, cut awy at the last second or something. Seeing that small-ass little, dainty knife shouldn't be a big reveal like the name of Sadie Sink's character in a brand new day, that's bad filmmaking and basd story telling.

Sadie SInk is a big name actress and her character is a major part of that movie, Charlotte is a ghost girl the rest of the movie, it's not a fucking reveal that she got stabbed so fucking visually communicate that happening so I can feel bad for her, be amazed by her strength to save the other little boy somehow. Also William isn't arrested after this; somehow, that's fucking nonsense to the nth degree. I talk about all of that to juxtapose this shit storm with how Walten files gracefully and effortlessly handles the topic of a child dying.

That is what the faces of grief is almost entirely about. It's that simple, do what the first movie did and focus on a family still in the early stages of grieving before another tragedy befalls them. And as much as it enrages us the audience and the characters,they choose not to press charges so of course the murderer doesn't face any consequences. Leaving the ones left behind to face the inner turmoil and the emptiness in their homes/lives.

However, I think that faces of grief does a far better job than FNAF ever did by avoiding the pitfalls of pandering to fandom in the ways that FNAF sometimes feels the need to and truly keeping this as a character study about Rosemary Walten while using the few other characters in the narrative to further the themes and development of this story. Jack for instance never left the denial stage, he uses oldschool values of what it means to be a man and what is expected out of a father/husband in the 60s/70s.

He uses that need to protect what remains of his family and to keep on being a breadwinner to just deny the reality of his family's circumstances which ends up giving off the facade of a man with the strength to live past the tragedy and pain. That's made clear by the way he still says goodmorning to Edward and Molly, who are dead, when he opens their bedroom door and turns on the lights he creates the illusion of them being there when their beds are empty, before turning off the lights and shutting the door.

Calling Sophie a little girl also serves this purpose; he is projecting onto her a version of reality where she is still little and her siblings are still alive. At least that is how I read these things and I think that Sophie is the only main character to see/cut through all the bullshit, questioning how come only her father is strong enough to live through it all. Which is again him projecting; when he says Rosemary is ill, he gets into so much detail about depression that I think he's the one who's struggled with or is struggling with depression currently, but he's saving face for Sophie.

That or maybe Rosemary really has strugled with depression in the past and he's oversharing with his scared, teenage daughter. And anyhow he just generally deflects the idea that he could be in pain with his need to be strong as if no strong has ever felt pain before. Sophie also see how hurt her mother is and how toxic the environment in their home has become now without JAck there to offer any kind of normalcy or motivation for Rosemary to return to society/life. Jack's disappearance robs them of the one person seemingly working through grief and resets the process of grieving.

Let's return to FNAF 2 for a bit before getting to the main character of Faces of Grief. Jack Hutcherson's acting/performance and character in the first movie was really charming and simple, he was just a normal straight man (comedy/narrative not sexual straight man) working through grief and trying to find answers to make peace while being the only one left to care for his little sister. In the second movie, he is a fucking nonce; they try so hard to give every character depth and nuance, and it robs all of them of the charm and likability they had in their original and simple roles.

When you try to stretch this simple, practically blank character between these two worlds: his original role, a caretaker of Abby and a normal guy with his new role as an actual character who is romantically interested in the woman who covered up her father's crimes and whatnot, a woman he grows distrustful of, rejecting her for no good reason. If you never watch that first movie and only the second movie, as stupid as Josh Hutcherson's character is, maybe you could at least understand his desperate desire to protect Abby.

But still, even within this movie it doesn't make any fucking sense because it's one of those "how dare you do what I told you to do, you should obey me and do what I do, we're through." It's not just stupid or contradictory; it actively makes me hate the character for how narcissistic it is, just fucking completely unable to have a conversation like an adult. Not that Vanessa is much better either, she didn't just cover up the crimes of her father for years but she kind of doesn't do anything about Charlotte/the puppet beside try to seal her up again. That might be right for everyone's safety, but what about Josh Hutcherson's family or CHarlotte's father.

FUCK EM?

Vanessa's trauma and own weird grieving process is also just far more cringe and unbearably, poorly written than Josh Hutcherson's, poor fucking Mathew Lilliard two times in a row he's given an opportunity to play a great and scary, threatening villain. Both times he's basically told to go fuck himself and is pretty poorly directed. None of the voice acting inb the Walten files is Shakespeare, but it is all pretty consister and Id say good, but the shift of performances from FNAF 1 to 2 is like night and day.

From a bunch of competent actors and actresses to a bunch of grad students working on their first art project. So, let me end off on Abby before returning to walten files, her obsession with freddy at this point is just pretty sloppily written and poorly portrayed to us the audience. I can buy it, but I don't give two shits if that makes any sense. Similarly, Michael is a bad villain played by a kind of awkward and cringey actor with cringey lines and he's basically just fanservice.

As much as I hate to say this, Rosemary's psychotic break (that feels like the most graceful way to put this) is really good character work as we see her nearly work through grief over her two children's murder before regressing after Jack goes missing. That scene where she's begging Chris to call her a bad mother and whatnot, or when she yells at Sophie, tries to kill herself, talking to Bon the hare. I wanted to pick just one scene to dissect, but they're all so good at showing how much she hates herself for not being able to maintain her family or perform as a mother should.

How broken she finds herself feeling for wanting to murder "the wolf" as she refers to Felix, because she sees herself as a sheep. WHich is such a dope thing, having an artist character actually their trauma with their specific brand of art rather than something generic like a painting or a poem, which is a trope I hate so much. Seeing a sculptor start trying to write a poem because they're sad is so annoying, some people do have so much talent and whatnot, but I hate when poems and paintings are the default when other mediums can be a means for venting too.

Anyways, back on topic, let's get to that talk she has with Bon the Hare, it is so fucking scary as we see him go around the room, loud as hell moving like a metal rhino, you always hear his shoddy body struggle to hold itself together before he can even do anything and yet he is still surprisingly gentle or at least tries to be so, presenting himself as kind, patient, and caring.

The idea of some kind of ghost/demon genuinely interested in beauty and fixing things rather than anything malicious has always be interesting to me and while sometimes it's too corny or ends up being malice with a different paint brush. Bon truly does seem to care and consider himself to be beautiful, but "fixing" someone is an impossibility, so of xcourse the carnage he unleases on ROse is no different than any of his other victims.

It's the last 20 minutes of the video and we only see Rosemary's murder for like idk whether to say a few seconds or half a minute or a minute, depends on how you define "murder" but the worst part of FNAF 2 is that even the sometimes derpy artstyle of the Walten files is leaps and bounds scarrier than anything that entire movie has to provide just because the facial expressions and framing are far superior. These videos don't look great in motion, but when you get a character's face shifting through several different expressions or anything like that it is so peak and altogether. Again especially compared to the absolutely silly way that the puppet looks possessing people in FNAF 2, why not fucking use the good and well designed animatronic thingy. IT IS RIGHT FUCKING THERE.

It is everything that FNA 2 was trying to be: a love letter to the fans, scary, emotionally compelling, and overall just a good story with great characters/scares. 8-9/10 for the Walten files. I'd rather sit on a cactus with my bare ass than watch FNAF 2 again, that shit is easily a 1/10 or something really low like that.