“You’re crazy. Wanna sit with us at lunch?”
The Five Nights at Freddy’s multi-media juggernaut rolls on with Five Nights at Freddy’s 2, a sequel to the very successful 2023 film. That film was not reviewed well, but killed at the box office. Freddy’s 2 will not be reviewed well by this reviewer because it’s not a good movie. As part of an IP that began life as a 2014 survival-horror video game created by Scott Cawthon and subsequently exploded in popularity, with many subsequent games, YA novels, comic books, and now films under its aegis, the movie doesn’t HAVE to be particularly good to grow the brand (and it isn’t). Convoluted writing, lazy jump-scares, and lackadaisical performances contribute to an uninspiring theatre experience.
Five Nights at Freddy’s 2 is a Universal Pictures production directed by Emma Tammi from a screenplay by Scott Cawthon. Josh Hutcherson leads an ensemble cast including Skeet Ulrich, Wayne Knight, Matthew Lillard, Piper Rubio, McKenna Grace, Teo Briones, Elizabeth Lail, Theodus Crane, and Freddy Carter.
“I believe in the Flat Earth, UFOs and ghosts, why not haunted animatronics?”
Vanessa (Lail) is having nightmares of her serial-killer father, William Afton (Lillard), who died at the end of the first Five Nights at Freddy’s. Afton was a child murderer and was crushed by Freddy Fazbear’s Pizzeria animatronics possessed by the souls of five children he killed. Mike (Hutcherson), the former security guard she befriended during the first film, suggests dream therapy when they meet for dinner and drinks, an appointment his friend, (Crane), and younger sister, Abby (Rubio), call a “date”.
Mike has told Abby that he’ll repair the haunted animatronics she befriended previously, but she misses her friends and is impatient. She doesn’t much enjoy her school or classmates, but is interested in her robotics class, taught by Mr. Berg (Knight). She is making a miniature version of the animatronic Chica (an anthropomorphic, yellow chicken) that she wants to enter into the class Robotics Show, but Mr. Berg very much doubts her abilities and scratches her from the program.
Meanwhile, a group of ghost-hunting, social-media influencers called the Spectral Snoopers, led by Lisa (Grace), has been granted access to the very first Freddy’s Pizzeria by Michael (Carter), a local guard. As they explore the premises, the Snoopers split up, and each is grabbed by an unseen force.
Mike finds a (convenient) flyer warning about Freddy’s with a phone number on it and has a conversation with Henry (Ulrich), the father of one of Afton’s victims. He learns about yet another haunted animatronic, the Marionette, that can only be pacified by a music box that Henry gives Mike.
When Mike returns to the home he shares with Abby, he discovers that she’s left to go and repair her friends herself, having grown tired of his excuses. He finds her in the abandoned restaurant, apologizes, and gives her a Freddy’s Speak N Spell that he finds on a shelf to console her.
Later that night, the device flickers to life and Abby hears Chica’s disembodied voice. The robot chicken tells her it will show her a way they can be together and directs Abby to the first Freddy’s, the haunted one.
Can Vanessa get her father out of her head? Will Mike be brave enough to tell Vanessa about his feelings for her? Can Abby finish her project in a way that will satisfy Mr. Berg? Will the force that drives the Marionette escape the pizza place to roam free and murder some more? See Five Nights at Freddy’s 2 if you have absolutely nothing else to do.
“Fair warning: This place will play with your imagination-If you let it.”
Five Nights at Freddy’s 2 is not a good movie. It is another in the (very) long line of poor video game adaptations. Most of the time, video game adaptations fail because playing a video game involves a person in ways that watching a movie never can. A player actively makes choices, wrestles with game mechanics, and steers the main character according to his whims. At the movies, one views a film passively. The director, cast, and production team have made all of the choices months before the audience can buy a ticket. Usually, IPs go in the other direction; an extraordinarily successful movie often spawns novels, comics, TV shows, and games- and it’s rare that video game adaptations of great films (or even good action films) are anything to write home about.
That’s not why Five Nights at Freddy’s 2 fails though. The plot is a mess, worldbuilding a twisted plate of pasta, and the actors appear as if they’d like to be anyplace else. Its worst sin, though, by far, is that it’s not scary in the slightest. It’s rated PG-13, but there’s no reason it shouldn’t be G- there’s no blood, no cursing, and exactly one mild jump scare in the film, while all the rest of the “horror” happens off-screen.
Another serious issue is the fact that this movie has no real beginning or end to it, so none of the characters really have arcs, nothing is resolved, and everything is aimed at a sequel. Normally, a movie shot for the purposes of sparking a sequel and forcing a franchise falls flat on its face because a good movie NEEDS a solid beginning and a satisfactory ending to go along with that middle part, or the viewer won’t care about the IP.
As the newest addition to the vast Freddy’s media armada, Five Nights at Freddy’s 2 doesn’t have to do that. It doesn’t have to be a good movie, it doesn’t have to be well-reviewed, it doesn’t have to make any money. All the movie needs to do is keep the IP in the conversation, even if it’s a bad conversation (along the lines of “there’s no such thing as bad press”). A sequel will surely be greenlit if it hasn’t been already.
Five Nights at Freddy’s 2 opens in theatres 12/5/2025.
Brian Isaacs - Executive Editor / Publisher