The character of Mike Schmidt is played by American actor Joshua Ryan Hutcherson in the film Five Nights at Freddy’s. He plays the role of a young security guard who is currently employed at the infamous Freddy Fazbear’s Pizzeria. Seeing the animatronics come to life, which are haunted by the spirits of little children, Mike is alarmed by the impending danger to his sister, Abby’s life. He tries to resolve a childhood trauma, only to find that the pizzeria had something to do with it. Mike’s character has been portrayed efficiently by the director, Emma Tami. Will Mike be able to overcome his childhood trauma? Will he finally be able to save his sister? Let us find out!
Spoilers Ahead
What Childhood Trauma Did Mike Have?
Mike had undergone a serious childhood trauma that kept coming back to him almost regularly in his dreams. This had caused him to lose his sleep and become an insomniac. He was taking medication to cure his condition, and just when he thought he would sleep in peace after taking those pills every night, he would be tormented with visions of his traumatic childhood. Mike had gone out with his family on a picnic when he was just a kid. As he was playing in the forest, his mother had asked him to take care of his younger brother, Garrett. Just when he got a bit distracted, he saw his brother being kidnapped by someone in a car. These thoughts haunted him every night, and the lingering guilt refused to let go of him. There were a lot of cases of kidnapping during the 1980s, one of which was that of his own brother.
How Did The Trauma Manifest In Mike?
There were several manifestations of the trauma in Mike as he had grown up. He lacked mental stability, making him unable to hold a proper job, eventually landing him up at the haunted pizzeria. At his initial job as a security guard at a shopping complex, he had seen a child being taken away by some man, and he immediately jumped in to rescue the child. Later, it was found that the man who was with the child was his father. This was a manifestation of the early trauma that he had faced during the kidnapping of his brother, making him suspicious and extra cautious of similar events. When he would sleep, he would have visions of the children who had been kidnapped during those times. He would see himself standing in the same woods where he went to on the day of the accident and would keep asking those children about the whereabouts of his brother, but to no avail. When he joined the job as a security guard at the pizzeria, the visions in his sleep got more vivid.
Mike would chase those children around to seek answers, but he failed. Once, when he had managed to catch hold of a child, he was severely injured by him. On waking up, Mike saw that the wound was there on his body for real. On another occasion, he had approached a child who was sitting with his back towards him, and on asking him for help, he had drawn a rabbit on the ground. All the signs pointed towards the pizzeria, and he understood that Freddy’s pizzeria had something to do with the missing children.
Was He Able To Save Abby?
On finding Abby’s babysitter to be missing, Mike started to take her along with him to his workplace. Soon, he found out that Abby had become friends with the animatronics and that they could operate on their own. The supernatural puppets seemed quite friendly in the beginning, but it was later that Abby found out that they were the spirits of the children who had once been abducted and wanted to make Abby a part of their group by killing her. He is told the truth about the puppets by Vanessa, a patrolling officer. She had a lot of information on the case because she was William Afton’s daughter, the owner of the pizzeria. She claimed that her father was involved in the case of the missing children and that he was still manipulating the spirits of the children to harm other kids. She had, however, come to help them and warned Mike to keep his sister, Abby, away from the place. She also told him that electricity was the only thing that could take the animatronics down.
Later, Abby is escorted into the pizzeria by one of the animatronics, and she, thinking it to be one of her friends, follows it in. The puppets start attacking her in the pizzeria, and just then Mike jumps in to rescue her. He tries knocking out the puppets with electric tasers, and just when we think he is about to win the battle, William Afton appears before them in the suit of a yellow bunny. When Vanessa intervenes to save the brother-sister duo, she is stabbed by her own father. William again wakes up the puppets and instigates them to attack Abby and Mike. Abby promptly makes a painting of the yellow bunny killing children; the spirits are reminded of the way they had been murdered by him. This causes them to kill William, and Mike escapes with his sister and the gravely injured Vanessa.
Final Thoughts
Mike was a responsible brother, even though he was portrayed as a lost individual in the beginning. He saves his sister from all the perils, including his evil aunt, who wanted her custody to receive the childcare money. He could see right through her intentions and took up odd jobs just to provide for his sister. He was so guilt-ridden about the disappearance of his brother at an early age that he wanted to save his sister at any cost. He takes all the perils on himself and proves to be a responsible sibling by the end of the film. The film has been an entertainer, as the character portrayals and screenplay have been amazing throughout. However, there were certain loopholes in the film, as there is no background information on the motives of William. We do not get an in-depth knowledge as to whether he was a sadist or if he had some bigger motive behind murdering children. We are also kept in the dark as to how the spirits of the children were put inside the animatronics by William and how he managed to manipulate them even after killing them with his own hands. Despite having certain loopholes, the film was enjoyable throughout, as it had some good supernatural elements in it.
