Five Nights at Freddy’s 2

2 outta 5

Five Nights at Freddy’s 2 is a limp entry in the film adaptation of the videogame series. Both films are overtly mopey emo slogs in a series that really should be more concerned about animatronic carnage. It is a sequel to the 2023 film but even in a sequel there should be some reestablishing of the rules and events of the first film, this isn’t freakin’ Lord of the Rings or Avengers: Endgame, y’know. If one hasn’t recently watched the first film, then significant chunks are going to blow right over one’s head. But the movie has spark when it just focuses on killer animatronic robots by using awesome puppetry to make them move. There is a lot of hogwash but also a few good bits. Like Wayne Knight, Newman from Seinfeld, getting his head torn apart by a killer animatronic robot. That was neat! There is underexplained nonsense that only people who play the games would get, and it makes for a weak sauce film that only sporadically springs to undead killer robot undead life.

Mike (Josh Huterson) is taking care of his younger sibling, Abby (Piper Rubio) after they survived an attack by possessed killer animatronic robots and the evil mastermind, William Afton (Matthew Lillard). Abby misses her robot friends, so she returns to the closed and creepy restaurant where they lived. Meanwhile, Mike is dating Vanessa (Elizabeth Lail), the daughter of Afton and she keeps having traumatic memories of killer robots. A teacher at school, Mr. Berg (Knight) is mean to Abby at a science fair, so she brings one of her killer robot animatronic friends along as a project. Soon lots of killer possessed animatronic robots are loose and Mike and Co. must stop them before they murder the whole town.

Mckeena Grace plays a Ghost Hunter who is possessed by a Marionette toy (there’s a lot of that going on here) and Grace basically has two modes, the investigator who wanders off alone and gets possessed (you’d figure if they’re like Ghost Hunters they’d be smarter about this type of thing.). And she gets to be the possessed Marionette demon which is very cool and lets her act like a flexible sinister creature of hell. But later on the Marionette possesses someone else and Grace’s character just … disappears? There are a lot of unexplained bits here, like when Vanessa has a confrontation with the ghost of her dead father, Afton. There are some trippy visuals, and Lillard is fun to watch. But the scene just … ends with no explanation if it was a dream or a spectral visitation or indigestion or whatever.

With Lillard and Skeet Ulrich in the film it seems like setting up a Billy and Stu from Scream reunion. But they never share screentime and both just have a single scene, Lillard in the maybe-dream scene and Ulrich as a tired exposition-providing old dude who looks sad about the things that happened years ago. Ulrich sells his few lines but it’s definitely not a Scream actor reunion. One of the film’s most disturbing bits is at the start when a victim in front of a crowd screams in anguish and pain. It’s very effective, probably because it is ripped off from the opening of Scream 2 when a victim in front of a crowd screams in anguish and pain.

The plot about Abby missing her killer robot friends is just utterly dumb. Like this kid survived being attacked by these monsters but she is sad about missing her killer robot friends. Of course, technically they’re supposed to be the souls of the childhood victims inhabiting the robots, but it’s never clear which ones are just demonic assholes or a friendly kid’s soul. The climax hinges upon furry animatronic (the characters from the original film) beating up the evil metallic versions of the same robot characters. It provides no explanation why the furry ones are good now. Afterwards Abby asks the soul of one of the kids if he’s going to heaven now. He says yes but it would have been way cooler if he had said something like, “No Abby, we’re going to hell!”

There’s a bit that is directly ripped out of the video game where Mike wards off killer robots by throwing a robot mask in front of his face. That works as a gameplay mechanic to keep the player safe, but in a movie, it comes off as incredibly stupid. Hutcherson has one funny crack about the office being badly designed without a door as a knock on the game’s design. But mostly he is super mopey and acts like he’s in some domestic drama. Any “emotional” scenes with Abby and Vanessa are also lame. An obviously evil dude lurks about looking obviously evil and he unsurprisingly turns out to be behind everything. One of the few actors to put in an interesting performance is Knight as the mean teacher but it should be no surprise Knight is great at playing a jerk.

But the puppetry in Five Nights at Freddy’s 2 is grand! And most killer robot scenes are awesome, but the human stuff is terrible as the characters are constantly emo bummers. Maybe the 3^rd time they’ll make it interesting, but probably not.