Review: Five Nights at Freddy’s 2

Director:  Emma Tammi

Stars:  McKenna Grace, Matthew Lillard, Josh Hutcherson

Five Nights at Freddy’s was the weakest film I saw in cinemas in 2023. A laborious, convoluted and dismally tame horror picture, I regretted seeing it and swore off the obviously inevitable sequels (in spite of the above faults it was a box office smash, mostly thanks to a fervently faithful teenage fanbase). So why return? Why put myself through this? I’m laying the blame with The Strangers Chapter 2.

The Strangers Chapter 1 was a similarly poor offering that I shook my head at and walked away from. Then, inexplicably, Renny Harlin’s unnecessary three-part remake took a turn for the better in its second installment earlier this year. I don’t particularly subscribe to the notion of guilty pleasures – love what you love! – but that’s as close as this year’s gotten. So who knew? If The Strangers could reverse its fortunes (kinda), why not Five Nights at Freddy’s?

Well, I can at least report that this second episode is a mild improvement on the first, but only in the same way that getting garrotted is probably better than being slowly boiled alive. It’s shorter, that’s the main thing. Though not short enough. This film continues the sorry misadventures of former security guard Mike (Josh Hutcherson) and his young sister Abby (Piper Rubio), trying to put their lives back together after the nonsensical events of the first outing. Mike’s renovating their home, but his efforts as a makeshift parent are notably inattentive. He and (former?) cop Vanessa (Elizabeth Lail) are trying to make inroads into a burgeoning romance, but she’s haunted by the evil deeds of her mad, pizzeria-owning robotics-expert father William (Matthew Lillard). Abby just misses the psychopathic animatronics possessed by dead kids (see what we’re dealing with here?).

As is, I suppose, a classic move when extending existing properties, Freddy’s 2 perpetuates the story with History We Forgot To Mention Last Time. We open in 1982 at the real first branch of Freddy Fazbear’s Pizza, where a little girl named Charlotte (Audrey Lynn-Marie) falls foul of William’s first batch of murderous robots, finally nabbed by the clutches of the mysterious Marionette. Back in the series’ present of 2002, that hoary ol’ chestnut the paranormal investigative team provide a fresh set of souls for William’s host robots to take power from, and they’re after Abby for typically ridiculous reasons…

Much has been made while promoting Freddy’s 2 of the stunt casting of Skeet Ulrich in a minor role, making this a supposed horror reunion for Scream‘s OG Ghostfaces. Nothing could really be further from the truth, considering Lillard’s William is already dead, only popping up in dreams, and Ulrich has a single solitary scene. It’s a non-story. Speaking of story, game creator Scott Cawthon takes sole writing credit this time out, and his efforts are the most obvious reason for the movie’s widespread failure, clotted as it is with cliché and otherwise crammed with corny dialogue exchanges that assume deep stupidity or an inattentive audience.

Just as weak is the reliance on a predictable string of uninspired and ineffective jump scares, all of which play timidly from the Blumhouse playbook, so much so that they feel like factored-in penance for forking over our money in the first place. It’s ironic really that this episode sees Bill’s old animatronics yearning to escape their dilapidated pizzerias, as one senses that director Emma Tammi has found herself in a similar kind of jail, constrained by the rigidity of Cawthon’s blueprint. You can occasionally sense her trying to eke something out of the material, but in a way that almost feels resigned, as though she’s trapped in this infernal franchise ’til it’s over and can’t quite see the light at the end of the tunnel just yet.

This sense of fatigue extends to the actors. In the first movie Hutcherson’s Mike was struggling with insomnia. He’s over that now, it seems. So it must be reading Cawthon’s script that has made Hutcherson’s delivery so bored and soporific. Young Rubio is finding her feet a little, but it’s incredibly telling that Freddy’s 2 only ever really comes alive thanks to the limited presence of guest stars McKenna Grace (already horror royalty at 19 years of age) and Wayne Knight (hamming things up as an inexplicably hateful teacher).

These movies are parceled up as gateway horrors, but your average Disney cartoon has more threat and unease than what’s offered here. But maybe that’s a problem that goes to the very core of Cawthon’s increasingly confused concept. In a series where death literally means nothing and even getting rid of ghosts seems incredibly cumbersome, the threat of mortal danger is conspicuously impotent. The first time anything rings as genuinely threatening is when, at an eleventh hour, the film’s weakly revealed antagonist instructs these stupid-looking robots to break the bones of our heroes. The idea of living in pain will resonate for anyone still watching.

Also, not for nothing, there’s a reason movies don’t often feature two main characters with the same first name. That’s how uninspired this thing is.

And then it’s over, and this too manages to be infuriating. It was always going to be like this, but Tammi and Cawthon did a decent enough job distracting us that it still comes as a little bit of disheartening surprise. Of course this has an abrupt cliffhanger. Of course many of the events alluded to don’t come to fruition in this episode. If we’re lucky this is the awkward middle chapter of a trilogy (like Harlin’s), and not just some ultimately forgettable filler in an endless identikit franchise. I hope so for Tammi.

It’s cold comfort when the best hope you have for a series is that it ends soon. But that’s really all we can cling to. In spite of a slightly sprier pace (though not for the first hour) and the charms of some peripheral talent, Five Nights at Freddy’s 2 is simply more of the same slop from the conveyor belt.