Five Nights at Freddy’s 2 (2025)
Directed by: Emma Tammi
Premise: Based on the video game series. A year after the events of the first film, Abby (Piper Rubio) revisits Freddy Fazbear’s Pizza. She inadvertently unleashes the possessed animatronics who go on a murder spree.
What Works: Five Nights at Freddy’s 2 is an improvement on its predecessor, at least in the filmmaking craft. The original picture often looked murky and its images were unintelligible. The sequel is much better lit. Like the first movie, a lot of Five Nights at Freddy’s 2 takes place in the dark but it is lit in a way that allows us to see what’s going on and creates some atmosphere. The sequel evidently had a little more money put into it and the picture benefits from more elaborate sequences and special effects. The follow up also expands the story world. The chief villain is the Marionette, a puppet that is haunted by one of the child victims. The opening scene is very effective especially in the way it conveys the childhood frustration of not being taken seriously by adults. Josh Hutcherson and Piper Rubio return as siblings Mike and Abby. Their relationship was one of the better parts of the first film and they continue to give this series some humanity.
What Doesn’t: The Five Nights at Freddy’s movies are part of a larger franchise that includes video games and books. The first movie was conceived as a standalone story but Five Nights at Freddy’s 2 is clearly intended to be part of an open-ended series. The sequel is burdened by the need to set up future installments. The storytelling often feels scattershot. The film introduces several new characters including a shady security guard played by Freddy Carter and a ghost hunting team led by Lisa, played by Mckenna Grace. The security guard disappears from the story only to reappear in the end. Lisa becomes the host of the Marionette but her character is pushed to the side. A lot of story elements don’t make sense. Abby misses her supernatural friends but she only spent one night with them a year earlier. The Marionette is out to punish parents but the killer robots murder anyone in their path. Five Nights at Freddy’s 2 is never scary. The imagery of murderous theme park animatronics has an inherently creepy quality but the movie never does anything interesting with it. Sequences do not draw out tension and work up to the scare.
Bottom Line: Five Nights at Freddy’s 2 is overstuffed and incoherent. The filmmakers attempt to please fans by introducing a bunch of their favorite characters but the movie ends up being a grab bag of incomplete subplots.
Episode: #1078 (December 14, 2025)