The Five Nights at Freddy's games and movie feature some scary animatronic mascots. But being on the set of the movie would have brought those fears to life (literally).

Real animatronics

R-Rated Five Nights at Freddy's Film from Director Emma Tammi's idea

Director Emma Tammi spoke about the on-set experience of Five Nights at Freddy's.

“They did have a life of their own at times,” Tammi told Entertainment Weekly of the animatronics. “Each of the different [moving parts] on the animatronic was puppeteered by a different person. You had the eyes controlled by someone, the arms controlled by someone else, the ears and jaws controlled by a different puppeteer.”

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But it didn't stop there. At one point, one of the animatronics moved by itself, freaking out Tammi. “I remember standing next to one of the puppeteers with a remote control in their hand and the animatronic all of a sudden twitched its eye,” she revealed. “I looked at the puppeteer and I was like, ‘Did you do that?' And she said, ‘No.' [laughs] It just needed to let us know it was alive.

“I kid, but they are imperfect, and wonderfully so, and definitely we embraced the quirks when they would do stuff that we didn't necessarily command them to do exactly,” Tammi concluded. “We sometimes thought it was gold and used it, so it was super fun in that way, it felt like a real live environment.”

Five Nights at Freddy's is a live-action adaptation of the popular video game series of the same name. Josh Hutcherson takes a job at a family entertainment center. Little did he know that the animatronics come to life. The film was released on Peacock on October 26 and in theaters on October 27.