Five Nights at Freddy’s 2, directed by Emma Tammi, is set after the events of Five Nights at Freddy’s (2023) as Mike (Josh Hutcherson), Abby (Piper Rubio), and Vanessa (Elizabeth Lail) all try to move forward. Freddy Fazbear and his haunted animatronics friends take a bit more than a simple off switch, though.
In the video game, you played as Mike, a security guard working at Freddy Fazbear’s Pizzeria. Mike has one job: watch the security cameras. What seems like a simple task takes a sinister turn when Freddy Fazbear and his friends, including Foxy the Pirate, Bonnie the Rabbit, Chica the Chicken, Balloon Boy, and The Puppet, come to life, sneaking around until they reach the security office and jump-scare the player. This is similar to the plot of the 2023 film.
The Five Nights at Freddy’s franchise started in 2014 on mobile and now includes over a dozen games and spin-offs that have spawned a variety of YouTube videos and, now, two films from Tammi.
I am a total newcomer to Five Nights at Freddy’s because, back in 2014, my love for the horror genre hadn’t really started. I had no idea what to expect from Five Nights at Freddy’s 2. Yet, the film left me more bewildered than anything else.
Five Nights at Freddy’s 2 wants to explore how individuals respond to trauma, a deep and complex topic. Yet the film constantly belittles its own efficacy through its silliness, dumbfounding character moments, and a general lack of awareness.
Its main protagonists embody the film’s identity and tone—stuck. After the death of her father (Matthew Lillard) in the first film, Vanessa tries to come to terms with the fact that her father was a child killer. There is a lot of baggage there, baggage that the film wants you to explore and contrast with Mike, who has mostly moved on from that fateful night. But then you have a misplaced running gag with Mr. Beg (Wayne Knight), one of Abby’s teachers, who said she can’t join the robotics team. When Abby brings Chica to impress Mr. Beg, he still thinks it’s fake.
All of this is to say that the film is clashing with itself. In one moment, you are dealing with Vanessa’s disturbing and challenging past, only to quickly switch to this annoying teacher gag. It’s a mess that doesn’t blend or flow smoothly.
The characters’ lack of awareness, too, made me want to yell at them through the screen for their stupidity. It’s a small detail, but it makes you laugh—and not in a good way. These are massive animatronic mascots, not sneaky horror villains that can blend into their surroundings like a shadow. They’re right there! It’s a miracle Mike ever survived the first film with how oblivious he is.
The film’s best example of horror comes near the climax, when a damaged Foxy jumps onto Vanessa’s car. It’s meant to be a jump scare similar to the car window scare in Smile (2022), but even this moment hardly works. Vanessa herself barely notices; instead of it being an intense moment similar to the game in giving you a jumpscare, you just laugh at the size of this damaged Foxy and can’t buy into the belief that this massive animatronic has tiptoed onto the car.
The practical work on the animatronic costumes, though, is the film’s highlight. We see an evolution of the animatronic monsters, with fabric wearing off. Then you have contrast with fully mechanical animatronics that have a vibe of the late 90s to early 2000s, outfitted with shiny new chrome materials. The practical feel of the animatronics has a clear direction, even if everything around it doesn’t.
Hutcherson isn’t given much to do as Mike, to the point that I forget he’s here at times. He is fine as a likeable guy that you want to succeed, but he feels like excess here, which isn’t a great sign for one of your film’s main characters. Rubio brings a sense of loneliness to Abby, but the script doesn’t give her much to do outside of shallow characterizations.
Lail, though, tries to do something interesting with Vanessa to capture her sense of guilt about her father. When Vanessa was a child, she probably noticed her father’s sins, but since we can’t choose our parents, we sometimes don’t want to think about the monster they could be.
Lillard briefly returns as Afton in a nightmare that Vanessa has. In the brief moment, Lillard is easily menacing, which was unusual to see when you consider his usual charming bumbling idiot archetype, but it’s clearly just there to remind you he might be back in a third film.
Even more so with Skeet Ulrich, as Henry, who, in a brief scene, gives exposition to Mike that his daughter was killed, once again teasing that this person might return.
Even though Five Nights at Freddy’s 2 has a wide range of impressive practical animatronics, it freezes like an old video game, stuck between a tone of seriousness and silliness.
Review Courtesy of Matthew Allan
Feature Image Credit to Universal via IMDb