“Five Nights at Freddy’s 2” (2025), the sequel film adaptation of the pandemic popular video game that expanded into a multimedia franchise feels like a filler movie to set up the third film, but ardent fans probably won’t care. It starts in 1982 before fast forwarding to see how Mike (Josh Hutcherson), his little sister, Abby (Piper Rubio), and Vanessa (Elizabeth Lail) are trying to get back to normal with varying degrees of success. Mistakenly thinking that danger is behind them, new threats emerge that not only threaten the survivors, but the whole town. With the video game creator Scott Cawthon going solo in the writer’s chair, this film loses much of what made the first film such a crowd pleaser to all movie goers, not just gamers.
“Five Nights at Freddy’s” (2023) was a great film because the two main characters, Mike and Abby, felt fully realized, and the horror was rooted in their pain, which was relatable to a broad base. The inexplicable supernatural aspects only enhanced the storyline: dreams and the power of ghost children. The kills, roughly six on screen and a plethora implied, particularly children, were brutal and plentiful thus pushing the violence to the furthest edges of PG-13 without feeling curtailed, which equate to high stakes. Now the drawings and dreams feel like after thoughts while jump scares with little blood and guts reigns supreme.
In the first film, Mike is not fully committed to Abby because he is stuck in the past trying to grapple with the loss of his brother. Mike is not seen as careless for dropping the ball with a living sibling because it is an undeniable, understandable distraction. He relied on his dreams to give him clues, but they proved dangerous. In “Five Nights at Freddy’s 2,” Mike is at least vigilant against the threat and trying to move on, but this normalcy turns him into the dull denier, the guy in the movie who doubts all the strange goings on that the heroine pushes against, which represents societal norms. The dull denier gaslights the heroine thus leaving her alone to handle the problem that endangers all of them, which is why horror is such a girl’s girl genre. Mike is now someone to hate through no fault of Hutcherson, who is given nothing to work with.
That heroine is Vanessa, who gets more screentime in “Five Nights at Freddy’s 2,” but is too furtive to be a true protagonist. She is a mystery to herself that does not get solved in this movie, so her journey is not strong enough to occupy a third of the movie or supplant Abby. Vanessa has dreams, but Cawthon makes the puzzling choice to keep her secrets in the oneiric world instead of tease them out so when one is revealed in the denouement, it feels rewarding instead of cheesy. Also, Cawthon decides to go for the romantic pairing between Mike and Vanessa, which is exactly why the first movie was good. It did not pair two people just because they were the opposite sex.
Warning: spoilers for the first movie.
Vanessa is the daughter of first serial killer, William Afton (Matthew Lillard). It feels natural that Afton should still be the big bad in “Five Nights at Freddy’s 2” except supernatural and potentially more powerful because his dead body is presumably still in his mechanical springlock suit that makes him seem like an animatronic, but no. They are saving that for the third movie, and it makes this film poorer for it. What were his plans for Vanessa? Vague and unclear. Does Cawthon know that serial killers have kids all the time, and those children can be clueless and completely uninvolved in their misdeeds? Apparently not or at least not in this case, which is fine except the master plan seems to be an idea, not a fully realized blueprint that Cawthon has the characters following. Cawthon is more committed to fleshing out the shadiness of Alton’s business model, complete with a horror fan service shout out to “Scream” franchise fans with Skeet Ulrich almost unrecognizable as Henry, a father of the one explicit ghost child in this film, Charlotte (Audrey Lynn-Marie).
Charlotte is a great character that Cawthon does not have a psychological handle on at all. “Five Nights at Freddy’s 2” starts strong with Lynn-Marie’s performance as a girl like Abby, who only feels a kinship to a horrific place who then becomes determined to fill the cracks that adults let children fall through. Cawthon then treats her as someone who would endanger innocents, not because Alton is manipulating, but because it would be cool if she became a monster mashup between a Japanese Noh mask and a creepy spider. The combination makes her feel like Pennywise’s cousin. Charlotte dies protecting a random little boy. This girl is not hurting kids. If she wanted revenge, she would go after the parents from her day, not the present. Also she was a loner who did not like hanging out with kids because she felt left out. She would not just randomly reach out to kids. Vanessa would do that as a ghost. Then Cawthon splits the supernatural streams with ghosts and possession, which is fine, but feels like an afterthought instead of a factor which moves the story forward in an interesting way.
The constant underlying threat is that Abby will become the next dead kid powering the homicidal animatronics. Abby is a kid, but not stupid yet this movie treats her that way. When her friends’ ulterior motive was revealed, she was not down with their plan. In “Five Nights at Freddy’s 2,” she has zero self-preservation skills. Even though she finds acceptance at school, she still wants to hang out with her ghost friends, who disappear until they don’t, and Cawthon just wanted to get to the ending without taking the necessary steps to connect the dots, which he is aware of if the two post credit scenes, which make the most mythological sense, are any indication. Again, it feels like a case of “wouldn’t it be great to delay the inevitable so we can make more money.” Make a strong second movie that connects with the first then the third will come naturally.
My biggest complaint about “Five Nights at Freddy’s 2” is the lack of visual distinction between the exterior of the original Freddy’s Fazbear Pizza and the franchise where the first movie is set. Characters keep having to explain that it is the original location with distinct features because it is not obvious. It could be. What happened production designer Marc Fisichella? While returning director Emma Tammi should take some of the blame, considering that she is no longer a cowriter and lost creative control in the area where she is an expert and clearly did such an amazing job the first time, let’s be generous and chalk it up to fulfilling contractual obligations and radical, enthusiastic acceptance of a shitty job situation and being a team player. Hell, fellow first film cowriter Seth Cuddeback is not involved in any way. Without Tammi, the quality would probably be completely eliminated. Keep your head up, Tammi!
Only one person makes “Five Nights at Freddy’s 2” watchable: Wayne Knight as Mr. Berg, Abby’s nemesis and robotics teacher. Knight proves that there are no small parts, just small actors, and he lives very large in this film as a teacher so bent on winning that he has beef with a child. Also, he is so focused on her as a liability that he misses how she is his leading pupil. Running with that concept as a thread for the entire movie through the denouement with his murder as the final, most gruesome death, would have been terrific, but Cawthon’s sense of proportion and timing is completely off. Knight and Rubio worked well together.
Will I see a third movie? Yes. “Five Nights at Freddy’s 2” was disappointing, but a serviceable horror movie that will not raise the pulse. If the third movie is crap, I’ll call it quits but suspect that what I am waiting for is in the future. There are plenty of Easter eggs for hardcore fans. The lawyer and Cory Williams as the cabbie from the first film make cameo appearances. Matthew Patrick, a YouTuber and creator of the team theory channel, voices Bonnie.
