Movie Review: Five Nights at Freddy's 2

This weekend, I saw the sequel to 2023's Five Nights at Freddy's movie!

The story

The film opens on a scene at Freddy Fazbear's Pizza in 1982. It's a bit tough to describe that scene without spoiling a lot of what happens afterwards, so I'll stay vague and say that it shows the start of this film's main antagonist. Once again, the film tries to call back to several elements that were revealed in Five Nights at Freddy's 2 (the game) and featuring the new animatronic characters it introduced, while bringing its own flavor and twists on the original story and its reveals, switching things around.

Back to the present day... well, a year after the events of the first film. Mike Schmidt (Josh Hutcherson) still lives with his younger sister Abby (Piper Rubio), and seems to have hit some degree of stability in his life. He has kept in touch with Vanessa Shelly (Elizabeth Lail), the police officer he met a year prior; he claims their relationship is just friendly, but even the younger Abby can see right through that excuse. The reality, though, is that due to everything that happened a year earlier, he still has a few doubts about her. Vanessa is still plagued with visions and nightmares of her father.

Speaking of! Due to certain events happening near the end of the first film, the town has seen renewed interest in the myths around the Freddy Fazbear restaurants and a festival is taking place that weekend to celebrate it. Costumes, attractions, all that.

However, that same evening is also the science fair at Abby's school. The girl has gotten more sociable with other kids (though few of them believe her when she tells the tale of her adventure at Freddy's, with the animatronics). However, she's not quite suited for the robotics class, where her teacher, Mr. Berg (Wayne Knight) constantly dismisses her lack of skill and puts her down, in a manner I can only describe as a "Future Horror Movie Victim That Will Make Crowds Say He Deserved It". You know the type.

Abby wants to return to Freddy Fazbear's and see her friends again, despite Mike's insistence that they are broken and that he will go and repair them someday. That's a lie he tells her so that she'll stay away, but... yeah, that won't work forever. In fact, while visiting the restaurant with Mike, she finds a talky-box that can answer to her voice commands, and she assumes she's talking to her friends... However, the entity speaking to her is a mysterious puppet, a Marionette from a different, older Freddy Fazbear's restaurant, one whose remains still exist elsewhere in town and which houses additional animatronics with more vibrant, flashy colors and even friendlier appearances. And those animatronics want to get out...

The review

I walked out from the first movie with the impression that it was merely putting down the foundations of a franchise, with a story that left enough loose ends for the next films to explore. Well, some of these pay off in this movie, which still leave plenty more for future films... again. Yeah, it's transparently building itself up into a long-term franchise, let's hope this entire plan pans out. (Considering just how big and popular the FNAF franchise is, I wouldn't be surprised if audiences were there every step of the way.)

The formula the film series follows was confirmed here: Introduce, with each new entry, the elements of its respective game in the series (the original animatronics from FNAF in the first, the Toy versions, the Puppet and Balloon Boy here, etc.). However, each film will twist what fans know of the lore of each game in order to present a whole new story instead; therefore, you can't actually use that knowledge to help you. I'm intrigued how this will all tie together especially as new movies come out.

Horror-wise, I felt the first film was weak; not scary enough, especially for source material famous for its use of jump scares and horrific imagery. This one has a couple scenes that end up being far more effective. Though with that said, I think this film suffers from the same issue of trying to play two fields at once: Being scary enough to deserve its PG-13 rating but staying low on gore and scary imagery. A lot of horrid stuff happens off-screen or is implied. Again, owing to the younger audience that FNAF attracts. It's better, but a part of me wishes they would have the guts (pun intended) to show some of those things.

Hutchison, Lail and Rubio form the main trio of this story, and play their roles well. Rubio's Abby gets to explore new personality facets, and the actress gets to participate to some scares. Mike Schmidt isn't a non-entity to the plot as he's still a major element, caring for Abby, dealing with the monster animatronics, and building his relationship with Vanessa; but it's Elizabeth Lail, as Vanessa, who gets some of the best scenes, being tormented by her past and her father (played by Matthew Lillard; the mere mention of his return says too much), and confronting both.

Other live actors here include Freddy Carter, Theodus Crane and Skeet Ulrich. (That last one, in particular, matters a fair bit for horror fans...) And for the voices of the new animatronics, we have Kellen Goff and Matthew Patrick (y'know... Matpat, of Game Theory fame) as Toy Freddy and Toy Bonnie, respectively. Lastly, Megan Fox voices Toy Chica, the animatronic that gets the most speaking lines, and she crushes it, pun very intended. There's a bit of self-indulgence, a bit of stunt casting here; I don't mind too much, though some of these choices do point towards the desire to keep these movies going for a few more installments, and perhaps keep honoring the franchise's legacy (and horror in general) by the wayside.

And of course, the animatronics themselves are just as impressive as they were in the first; once again, they were created by Jim Henson's Creature Shop, and they're so identical to those in the games that you could be excused for thinking they're CGI. Well... CGI is likely used for shots and actions that these slow robots couldn't realistically achieve. But other than that, they're there, with the actors, on-screen. And it's great to see them interact physically with the world.

At the start of this portion, I mentioned that the movie tries to introduce all the important element of lore from FNAF 2, the game, albeit twisting them some to keep en element of freshness. The unfortunate side-effect of such a process is that there's a ton of lore drop for this new take on the events, and it can be a little too much for audiences who either go in blind, or have only followed the FNAF movies so far. It would be a very tough balance to achieve and they haven't quite achieved perfection there.

In short: A step-up, without a doubt, but still a couple of issues owing to what it has to add in every installment. This one is heavy on fanservice for long-time followers of the series, often to its detriment. It remains to be seen whether the next movies will keep the momentum going by being even better.