Review by C.J. Bunce
What the heck happened? It’s tough when you have high expectations for a movie, especially one with such a big fan following. The Five Nights at Freddy’s franchise is certainly beloved for its video games and books, but the sequel to the 2023 movie, Five Nights at Freddy’s 2, now streaming on Peacock, doesn’t provide either a worthy story or scary elements the franchise deserves. It may be because it sticks to a PG-13 rating, maybe believed to be needed for the younger side of the fan base. But it also doesn’t add anything new to the first film, which only highlights that movie’s deficiencies.
More animatronics, more lore from the game and books, but stuck with bland characters and a bland script leaves this sequel begging for a jump start to put it in the realm of more successful horror adaptations like Wednesday or Chilling Adventures of Sabrina or at least offering up some fan service and throwbacks like Stranger Things.
Even a boost with cameos by Scream actors Matthew Lillard and Skeet Ulrich doesn’t help. Their appearances feel more like stunt casting.
Troubled security guard Mike (The Hunger Games’ Josh Hutcherson) returns with Elizabeth Lail (Mack & Rita, Robot Chicken) as Vanessa, the local cop whose father was behind the dark history of Freddy Fazbear’s Pizza, with Piper Rubio as Mike’s sister Abby. Lail seems to do the best she can with this role, but Hutcherson and Rubio’s characters haven’t grown from the first movie so they seem lifeless. Abby doesn’t act like a normal kid. She acts like a preschooler or a kid with some kind of deficiency. Her role centers on her desire to have her brother rebuild the animatronics that were possessed in the first movie. What? That can’t be what was intended. Does she need counseling? Therapy? And any older brother in real life who acted like Mike would be separated from his sister. He’s just oblivious. Vanessa is obviously affected by the events in the first movie, but what else is going on in her life? Does she have nobody else to help her?
A second Freddy Fazbear’s Pizza is introduced in this movie, with good animatronics pitted against bad, and new cast members include Wayne Knight (Jurassic Park) and Mckenna Grace (Chilling Adventures of Sabrina), woefully underutilized and miscast here. Why does the teacher played by Knight hate Aby so much? What’s the background there? Characters just act without clear motivation. The movie’s story problems seem to be fundamental.
From video games to manga and children’s books to the big-screen, Five Nights at Freddy’s is a pop culture phenomenon. Blumhouse (who brought us wins with M3GAN, The Black Phone, and the Halloween and Happy Death Day films) hasn’t had a clunker in years. But this sequel is supposed to be a darker journey than the first movie for its father and daughter leads, and its Showbiz Pizza and Chuck E. Cheese-inspired story doesn’t measure up to other Blumhouse films. The first movie was marketed as a movie with “blood-chilling” and “terrifying horror,” but it was really about kids’ level jumps and frights with its possessed animated characters. The only answer seems to be spending more money on a new script writer and director if another sequel is greenlit. Maybe an R rating and corresponding actually scary story would help.
It’s hard to skip a new entry from this franchise, but make sure you set your expectations accordingly. Five Nights at Freddy’s 2 is now streaming on Peacock.
