Five Nights at Freddy’s 2 (2025)

Freddy Fazbear and His Animatronic Friends Return in Five Nights at Freddy’s 2

Since reviewing 2023’s surprise horror smash Five Nights at Freddy’s, I’m sad to say I still have not played any of the wildly popular video games. I have also not made myself any more familiar with the expansive lore. All I’ve truly done is let my 8-year-old nephew excitedly tell me everything he knows about the franchise like a good, attentive aunt should. I’ve also watched director Emma Tammi’s film a couple of additional times. That’s pretty much it.

I’m glad I didn’t have any of that knowledge going into Tammi and screenwriter-game creator Scott Cawthon’s Five Nights at Freddy’s 2. While nothing in this surprised me, that did not stop me from having a pleasant enough time watching this sequel work its way through all of the kid-friendly horror madness (think Alvin Schwartz’s Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark books for a suitable viewer age range). Tammi and Cawthorn gleefully construct suitably sinister set pieces, delivering a handful of goofy lore reveals while also dispatching a character or two with wickedly devilish aplomb.

The story picks things up 18 months after Mike (Josh Hutcherson) and his much younger sister Abby (Piper Rubio) survived their encounter with the possessed animatronics created by child murderer William Afton (Matthew Lillard) and stored at the dilapidated ruins of a Freddy Fazbear’s Pizzeria location. While the duo is making a valiant attempt to move on with their lives, Abby still misses her robotic friends along with the spirits of the children she helped free from their ethereal imprisonment. This leads her to make a shocking discovery: the flagship Freddy Fazbear’s still exists, and who she believes to be her former friends — Freddy, Bonnie, Chica, and Foxy — are all there waiting for the youngster to find them.

It’s all pretty straightforward and rudimentary stuff, but that doesn’t mean Tammi and Cawthon refrain from piling one giant cheesy glob of nuttiness right on top of another with jovial intensity. We’ve got the angry spirit of a murdered child (Audrey Lynn Mar) who’s spent two decades planning their revenge, a creepy new animatronic dubbed “The Marionette” (which is actually a Jim Henson Creature Shop puppet, and a pretty cool one at that), a grieving father (Scream veteran Skeet Ulrich) with mysterious ties to Afton, a team of eager television ghost chasers lead by the determined Lisa (Mckenna Grace), and a bumbling security guard (Freddy Carter) who may not be as incompetent as he appears. Elizabeth Lail also returns as Afton’s psychologically scarred daughter, Vanessa, the secrets she’s keeping from Mike and Abby inadvertently putting all three of their lives in jeopardy.

Tammi showcases the same visual restraint and old-school composure she brought to the first film. There’s nothing flashy to the cinematography or the editing, and while the director keeps a measured pace, suspense remains solid and the energy level stays high throughout. The opening set piece involving Mar is especially good, as is another in the rundown ruins of Freddy Fazbear’s original location involving Lisa and her two ghost-hunting cohorts. There’s also a wonderful bit involving Abby’s loathsome science teacher Mr. Berg (a perfectly cast Wayne Knight), his classroom encounter with Chica especially memorable.

The best element, however, remains those animatronics, the mad geniuses at Jim Henson’s Creature Shop again outdoing themselves. The new versions of the four Fazbear stalwarts look incredible. They’re as endearing as they are terrifying, and the fact that they are almost entirely practical makes them all the more spectacular. The Marionette puppet is equally outstanding, even if it must be admitted that the CG utilized to allow it to whip across the screen with madcap abandon is rather noticeable. Still, this creature is a wonderful addition to the lethal lineup of mechanical villains, their demonic machinations appropriately despicable.

The continual cavalcade of coincidences is obnoxious, and the reliance Cawthorn places on his viewers already knowing much of the lore from either the video games or their various literary spinoffs is somewhat tedious. The construction of the narrative is essentially a never-ending sequence of gotcha! moments one right after the other, and I don’t begrudge anyone sitting in the theater for finding that more than a little annoying.

Maybe I got caught up in my promo audience’s overall exuberance, but, thankfully, none of those items irritated me all that much. Tammi’s confidence in handling the material is apparent right away, as is her affection for these characters and the world that they inhabit. Five Nights at Freddy’s 2 offers up pretty much the same gateway horror delights that its predecessor did, and I don’t have any problem with that whatsoever. I had fun and, as silly as all of this undeniably may be, that’s all that matters.

Film Rating: 3 (out of 4)