My quick rating – 5.3/10. Five Nights at Freddy’s 2 picks up one year after the events at Freddy Fazbear’s Pizza, a place whose very real horrors have been conveniently repackaged into a kitschy local myth complete with the town’s first-ever Fazfest. Former night guard Mike (Josh Hutcherson) and police officer Vanessa (Elizabeth Lail) are still sitting on the truth, choosing to shield Mike’s 11-year-old sister Abby (Piper Rubio) from what really happened to her animatronic “friends.” Naturally, secrecy plus trauma plus sentient murder robots is a terrible combination, and when Abby sneaks out to reconnect with Freddy, Bonnie, Chica, and Foxy, the past comes roaring back with rusted joints and unfinished business.
I thought it opened strongly with a voiceover teasing a spectacle before launching into a flashback set twenty years earlier. A young girl senses that something is very wrong beneath the flashing lights and forced smiles, and her curiosity leads to a brief but genuinely unsettling peek behind the curtain. This sequence, capped off with a fun animated credit roll, is easily one of the sequel’s best moments.
Sadly, with the return to the present time comes the return to the more typical horror filler of obnoxiously loud “ghost hunters” that split up seconds after their entrance, as if they had scanned the manual on horror cliches on their way in. Because of the PG-13 rating, the gore is limited, so my hopes of a meaningful massacre are squashed quickly.
Director Emma Tammi returns and does manage to wring some eerie imagery out of the expanded locations, with several nicely framed shots that remind you why this franchise works visually. Audrey Lynn-Marie is particularly unsettling as Charlotte, delivering one of the film’s more disturbing performances. On the casting front, however, the script makes a baffling choice by introducing both a Michael (Freddy Carter) as Vanessa’s brother and a Mike as her boyfriend. The name confusion adds nothing but needless irritation. Matthew Lillard’s involvement as their father, on the other hand, is a welcome addition and a reminder of how much stronger the series feels when it leans into its legacy players.
Where the movie goes from bad to worse is in terms of writing, Scott Cawthon. The last act of this movie is a mash of plot points, most of which are glossed over with a simplistic “because it’s a plot point” explanation. The bigger, better sequel angle, I guess, involves this movie being larger than the first. There are more animatronic enemies, there are more places to explore, there is more noise, but bigger doesn’t always mean better.
The plot, of course, relies on a string of dumb luck moments, including a “car broke down in the middle of nowhere” bit where help conveniently shows up without a second’s notice. Perhaps even dumber, however, is this location being abandoned and left to decay, but conveniently located a stone’s throw from everyone.
In the end, Five Nights at Freddy’s 2 is consistent with the first film but not an improvement. It feels less like a complete movie and more like a 104-minute trailer for Part 3, with some cool animatronic designs sprinkled in for good measure. Stick around through the credits if you need confirmation. The sequel bait is loud and proud. I was hoping this round would level up. Instead, the script collapses like an announcer’s table at a WWE pay-per-view.
