Five Nights at Freddy's 2
Five Nights at Freddy's 2
Starring Josh Hutcherson, Elizabeth Lail, Piper Rubio, Matthew Lillard
Directed by Emma Tammi
In 1982 at the flagship Freddy Fazbear's, young Charlotte (Audrey Lynn-Marie) witnesses a boy being taken by an animatronic rabbit behind the stage, and despite her pleas to adults to help, go on her own. She finds the boy unconscious and about to be killed the Fazbear's founder William Afton (Matthew Lillard) and gets him to safety, but in the process is stabbed by Afton and dies in the arms of her favorite animatronic, the Marionette.
In 2002, Mike Schmidt (Josh Hutcherson) and his now-eleven year old sister Abby (Piper Rubio) are still reeling from the events that happened to them at Freddy Fazbear's. Abby misses her animatronic friends who were the souls of children killed by Afton, and Mike is trying to get her to forget about them. As he tries to fix Abby, he also sets out to fix Vanessa Shelly (Elizabeth Lail), a local police officer and Afton's daughter who was stabbed by Afton at Fazbear's. She is haunted by dreams of her father, and things take a turn for the worse when a ghost hunting crew accidentally re-awaken Charlotte, who's spirit now inhabits the Marionette. Bent on revenge on the parents who stood by and did nothing, Charlotte brings to life new animatronic robots to get her vengeance, and use Abby as bait to make her dreams a reality.
Honestly, I wish that was all this movie was, because I was in it for that. The premise seemed simple enough: a vengeful spirit wanting revenge on those she deemed guilty of causing her death is one that's been done in movies before, but always a crowd pleaser. However, there's a final act twist that comes out of nowhere, doesn't make sense, and only serves to set the film up for its inevitable third movie due to its record-breaking debut despite the critics low score. While it doesn't completely detract from the overall movie, it only serves to be an annoyance that adds to the other annoyances the movie delivered in favor of an actual thought-provoking story.
2025 saw two major horror sequels come out, being "Five Nights" and "Black Phone 2," but unlike "Black Phone 2" that re-shaped its villain, "Five Nights" provided more of the same. At least this time the movie wasn't entirely about Mike trying to have lucid dreams in hopes of finding where his brother disappeared to when he was a child and also a montage of them building a fort with animatronics. Instead, it's scene after scene of unwarranted jump scares that can be seen a mile away and only appear to make the audience gasp in fear, because otherwise they'll gasp in yawns.
That's because, while the story is more tightly written, there's really not a lot there. Josh Hutcherson almost takes a supporting role as Mike, Abby's brother and protective figure who essentially wants to forget everything that's happened and live a normal life. Somehow, his role here is even more vanilla than the first, and comes across as moving wallpaper in most scenes.
On the opposite end, much like Violet McGraw emerged from supporting player to lead in "Black Phone 2," Piper Rubio equally emerges as a supporting role as Abby and into the main spotlight here. Playing an eleven year old with the intelligence of someone twice her age, Rubio plays Abby with equal parts innocence and resilience, determined to find her missing friends (who are the spirits of kids killed by Afton and who's bodies he hid in the animatronics and whose spirits were contained in those robots that Afton controlled...yeah, doesn't make sense to me either) no matter what. This serves as the main thrust of the movie, and also how Abby is taken advantage of by Charlotte's ghost, who uses her desire to find her friends as a means of releasing the animatronics from the confines of Freddy Fazbear's.
Finally, worst of all, there's Elizabeth Lail's Vanessa. It seems that the writers have no idea what to do with her character in either film, as in the first film she's a police officer who has an odd infatuation with Freddy Fazbear's, only for it to be revealed in the end that she's the daughter of the murderous founder and who assisted him when she was a child unbeknownst to her. Now, she's struggling with nightmares of her father and having a cold relationship with Mike ("cold" as in non-existent, as there's more chemistry between cats and dogs than with these two characters). Again, she's given confusing plot devices to work with, with another shocking turn at the end that further solidifies her as one of horror cinema's most weakly written characters. At this point, if she doesn't demand $50,000,000 for the next movie, I'd advise her to not sully her acting talent any further and move on.
The film's shining point comes with the animatronics themselves, once again brought to life by Jim Henson's Creature Shop and, to director Emma Tammi's credit, not CGI abominations. They're given a lot more to do here, and now they actually talk (in fact, Chica, Abby's favorite, is voiced by none other than Megan Fox herself), and are actually much more intimidating and frightening. If only their terror comes naturally instead of popping on screen in rapid loud-music moments. Also, it's not intimidating to see them lumbering through their scenes, moving so slowly it makes Michael Myers and Jason Voorhees look like they're running marathons. So how does Tammi make them terrifying? By introducing a monstrous new villain: gravity. Characters fall to the floor in record amount, and it's laughably bad.
I guess that's another saving grace of this movie: it's rewatchability. You can watch this movie over and over with friends and laugh at the audacity, and actually be entertained. To its credit it doesn't want to do anything more than be a cash grab, and to that end it achieved its goal. While the story again doesn't make sense, the characters are terribly written, and it relies so much on jump scares, there's a charm that makes "Five Nights at Freddy's 2" a little better than its predecessor - but not by much.
The Score: C
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