I’ve never had the experience, but surely playing the Five Nights at Freddy’s video games is far more enjoyable than watching their big screen incarnations, which now unaccountably amount to two. Although it’s no surprise that there would be a Five Nights at Freddy’s 2, since its 2023 predecessor managed to become a breakout box office hit two years ago even though it premiered simultaneously on Peacock. Much of the original cast and creative team have reunited for this wholly unnecessary sequel, which once again proves that oversized animatronic animal figures, no matter how homicidal their behavior, are more laughable than scary.
As if to compensate, returning director Emma Tammi really piles on the jump scares, mainly achieved by sudden bursts of deafening volume that the sound engineers of Spinal Tap would envy. You can’t blame her, since game creator Scott Cawthon has once again provided a screenplay layered with laborious supernatural elements and apparently enough Easter eggs to excite faithful gamers while meaning absolutely nothing to everyone else.
Five Nights at Freddy’s 2
This makes it two nights too many.
Rather than go in a, you know, different direction, the sequel basically reprises its predecessor. We’re thus reintroduced to Mike (Josh Hutcherson) and his little sister Abby (Piper Rubio), the latter pining for her animatronic “friends” Freddy, Chica, Foxy, and Bonnie, who were revealed to be inhabited by the spirits of murdered children. Meanwhile, police officer Vanessa (Elizabeth Lail) is suffering from PTSD from the events of the first film (join the club), which include the revelation that her father (Matthew Lillard) was the serial killer who killed them.
After a prologue set in 1982, in which we witness a little girl desperately attempting to save a child from the killer at the original Freddy’s only to be murdered herself, the action shifts to 20 years later. A paranormal investigator (Mckenna Grace, still ghost hunting) and her team of “Spectral Scoopers” visit the abandoned site at the behest of a creepy security guard (Freddy Carter, filling the bill admirably). Needless to say, things don’t go well for them.
It seems that the animatronic figures there are possessed by the spirit of that little girl, now intent on seeking revenge on the uncaring adults who didn’t prevent her death. Meanwhile, in plot elements too tedious to recount, Abby reunites with her former friends, with Chica (voiced by Megan Fox, for some reason) even volunteering to accompany her to school to serve as her robotics project at a science fair. (I told you the plot wasn’t worth recounting.)
The sequel’s chief novelty is having the animatronic creations eventually leave the confines of their Chuck E. Cheese-style theme restaurant and go out into the real world, including visiting the “Fazfest” that the town is putting on in a perverse remembrance of the carnage that occurred earlier. It only serves to prove that the robots, while somewhat creepy in their home environment, are about as scary as oversized Muppets when they’re shown doing such things as attacking a moving car. (That makes sense, since they’re created by Jim Henson’s Creature Shop, who should at least have provided Statler and Waldorf to appropriately jeer at the ludicrous proceedings.)
It all leads to the sort of PG-13-rated carnage that might thrill younger viewers while reducing adult horror fans to helpless laughter. The latter are at least given a bone with the reappearance of Lillard, who shows up briefly in a deftly designed nightmare sequence, and, marking a Scream reunion, Skeet Ulrich in an even briefer turn as a grieving father.
The film’s cast deserves credit, not so much for their performances as their ability to keep a straight face throughout, with child actor Rubio once again the standout. Although she has some steep competition in the form of Wayne Knight, who somehow manages to make his science teacher character even more obnoxious than Newman from Seinfeld.
Coming across like a horror film on training wheels, Five Nights at Freddy’s 2 has the audacity to end with a cliffhanger teasing a third installment. It seems less a promise than a threat.
