Matthew Lillard Going Full ‘Scream’ Is the Best Part of ‘Five Nights At Freddy’s’

Warning: Spoilers for Five Nights at Freddy’s and Scream ahead.

It’s been 27 years since Matthew Lillard terrorized Sidney Prescott behind the Ghostface mask in Scream, arguably one of the greatest villain reveals in recent horror movie history. That’s why it’s so darn delightful—even if it’s not particularly surprising—when the big bad in Five Nights at Freddy’s takes off its animatronic headpiece to reveal… Matthew Lillard. And nearly three decades later, Lillard still knows how to play an unhinged serial killer perfectly.

In Five Nights at Freddy’s, which is based on the popular horror video game series of the same name, Lillard plays a career counselor who pushes his client, Mike (Josh Hutcherson) to take a job as a security guard at an abandoned family fun center, Freddy Fazbear’s Pizza. Lillard, with his trademark goofy-yet-unsettling smile, informs Mike that the owner of Freddy’s is “eccentric” and “sentimental,” which is why he’s refused to have the place demolished. Mike’s job is to keep people from getting on the premises… and also to avoid being murdered by the killer animatronic mascots that run the place.

That last part isn’t in the job description, but Mike figures it out soon enough. Eventually, the full story comes out: The owner of Freddy’s, William Afton, was a deranged serial killer. In the ’80s, Afton kidnapped and murdered five children at his restaurant, and he put the remains of their bodies inside his cutting-edge animatronic mascots. The ghosts of those dead children now haunt those machines, and they all worship their leader, the yellow bunny rabbit. But unlike the other mascots, the bunny has an actual human inside the suit: William Afton, aka Matthew Lillard.

“Symmetry, my friend,” Afton rasps out via a voice-changer to Mike in the big showdown of the film. And Afton might be talking about killing Mike’s brother in the film, but horror movie fans will catch the double meaning. It’s a full-circle moment from when Lillard, as Stu Macher, revealed himself as one of the two voices of Ghostface, in the big showdown of the 1996 meta-horror classic, Scream. And just to help the reference hit extra hard, Five Nights at Freddy’s director Emma Tammi even gives Lillard a Scream-esque butcher knife to wield.

It’s clearly a callback to his iconic, unhinged performance in Scream when he and Skeet Ulrich waxed poetic about horror movie tropes, while they circled in on Neve Campbell’s character, Sidney Prescott. Five Nights at Freddy’s doesn’t give Lillard nearly the same level of whip-smart material, but the horror veteran nevertheless delivers a perfect blend of creepy and camp as Afton.

It’s a shame Lillard is only in two scenes in Five Nights at Freddy’s because he’s easily the best part of the film. Thankfully, rumor has it—according to Lillard himself, on a podcast earlier this year—that he signed a three-film contract for the Five Nights at Freddy’s movie franchise. So, hopefully, we’ll get to see more of him in the sequel—if the sequel happens. As Stu would say: I’m ready, baby!