2023’s Five Nights at Freddy’s was one of the worst movies of that year. It was an absolute slog of a movie that was incredibly painful to watch. Instead of building anything resembling the compelling atmosphere out of the beloved indie games, it fixated on references, fan-service, kid-glove sanitization, and filmmaking so limp it partially disintegrated on screen. And for some reason that I cannot justify, I have dragged myself back into this hellscape for Five Nights at Freddy’s 2. A sequel so much more miserable than the first that I almost admire its commitment for being unbearable.
A year has passed since the supernatural nightmare at Freddy Fazbear’s Pizza. The former security guard Mike (Josh Hutcherson) has kept the truth from his 11-year-old sister, Abby (Piper Rubio), concerning the fate of her animatronic friends. When Abby sneaks out to reconnect with Freddy, Bonnie, Chica and Foxy, she sets into motion a terrifying series of events that reveal dark secrets about the true origin of Freddy’s.
If I have to dig up anything positive to say about Five Nights at Freddy’s 2, it’s that Matthew Lillard and Skeet Ulrich actually showed up to work, and that I still appreciate that the animatronics and sets remain practical. Beyond that tiny scrap of goodwill, this movie is a steaming pile of dog shit. Just like the first one, it completely fails to deliver anything close to a narrative. It is so obsessed with fan service and references that its “story” is basically a checklist of moments, strung together, where each one winks at its audience anytime it references something. Any sense of internal logic is thrown out the window as the movie goes out of its way to insult the audience’s intelligence at every turn.
In my head I was practically shouting, Abby, those animatronics are not your friends as they tried to kill you in the last movie. Friends don’t kill their friends. How stupid are you? I get that she is a kid, but honestly she earns every bad thing coming her way given her stupidity. And Mike, why are you not parenting her and telling her she cannot be handing around murderbots? Are you really that scared of hurting your sister’s feelings? These questions and a whole storm of others were spinning through my mind during the agonizing 104 minute runtime. While fans of the games will obviously eat this up, it is clear that the movie doesn’t think highly of its audience as it treats them as a bunch of mindless morons.
The acting, outside of Matthew Lillard and Skeet Ulrich’s 3-minute cameos, is a mess. Elizabeth Lail and Piper Rubio are downright painful to watch, and Josh Hutcherson is essentially on autopilot. Which made the dialogue sound like it was painfully written by AI. While the animatronic puppets and the production design was impressive, the movie still looks terrible. And in that ugliness, it only amplifies the most tired horror cliches imaginable.
Every bit of “horror” in Five Nights at Freddy’s 2 can easily be boiled down into cheap jumpscares. While the games leaned into jumpscares too, it at least had an atmosphere that made them more impactful. This movie has none of that. No mood, no suspense, nothing. Every scare felt cheap, lazy, and telegraphed from a mile away. I was rolling my eyes so much from each jumpscare that I am surprised that they didn’t get stuck.
Overall, Five Nights at Freddy’s 2 keeps the awful legacy of its predecessor alive and wheezing. It’s another cheaply made, embarrassingly childish “horror” movie that cares way more about tossing bones to fans than actually attempting to be, you know, a horror movie. I can’t say that I am shocked by how terrible it turned out to be, but that doesn’t make sitting through it any less painful. As a critic, you have to suffer through bad movies to understand the greats, but that doesn’t change the fact that watching movies this bad feels like a slow, deliberate form of torture.
My Rating: D-
Now in theaters nationwide
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