Five Nights At Freddy’s 2: The Lifeless Franchise Continues

When it comes to successful IPs, leveraging legions of fans into box office success, it almost doesn’t matter what critics think. The Five Nights at Freddy’s franchise, based on a a popular video game series, has spawned books, graphic novels, hoards of merchandise, and now films. The first film, Five Nights at Freddy’s, was not well-received by critics but fared much better with audiences and fans, finding reasonable success at the box office. To that point, the prospects of a sequel were inevitable and now that sequel is upon us, the aptly-named Five Nights At Freddy’s 2. So what is different this time around? The answer is actually not much. One can only assume that since the formula isn’t broke, why fix it? Therefore, audiences who may have had issues with the original film will not find any relief here, assuming they haven’t decided to skip it altogether. However, for fans of the first film and the franchise, this sequel delivers more sanitized killer animatronic robot action, cheesy family drama, and a ridiculous, logic-defying story that takes the long way around to dive deeper into the lore of Freddy and how the saga came to be. Perhaps there is some value to that, but the unremarkable way it goes about it ultimately makes for a tedious watch as those in front of and behind the screen are merely going through the motions.

Set one year after the events of the original film, Five Nights At Freddy’s 2 picks up the story of Mike (Hutcherson) and his little sister Abby (Rubio) whose exploits have earned them a reputation in their town, with their story becoming stuff of legend and inspired its own festival, the first ever Fazfest. Making perfect cover for what was inevitably going to happen, it was only a matter of time, while others would rather forget the sordid past of Freddy Fazbear’s Pizza. However, all would come to light as Mike and Abby could just not stay away from Freddy and his gang. Ever since their escape, he and Vanessa (Lail) worked hard to keep the truth of what had happened to the animatronics from Abby, but that could only work for so long. Clinging to the hope that she’d one day see her friends again, Abby refused to move on and move forward from those who were there for her when Mike wasn’t. Trying to steer her away from Freddy, Bonnie, Chica, and Foxy by convincing her that they were broken and that he would one day fix them, he just couldn’t pick himself up and finally tell her the truth. As Fazfest loomed over the horizon, Mike had to face that truth sooner rather than later. That being said, he wasn’t the only one as the film reveals how Vanessa’s backstory went hand-in-hand with the backstory of the nightmare that was Freddy Fazbear’s Pizza and her troubled relationship with her serial killer father, William Afton (Matthew Lillard).

Unlike the location from the first film, all roads led to the original Freddy Fazbear’s Pizza, a relic full of secrets now unearthed by a group of paranormal investigators investigating the location for their TV show. Unwitting victims of the forces haunting the other Freddy’s, Mike, Vanessa, and Abby eventually found themselves called there to contend with a powerful and especially vengeful spirit. Charlotte (Audrey Lynn-Marie), a young girl whose death led to the closing of the original Freddy’s, sought revenge against the parents she deemed responsible. Preying on the vulnerabilities of our three, the plot was primarily driven by the erratic behavior of the characters and the dysfunction between them, often leading to painful exchanges as they try to make sense of what is happening in the most ridiculous of ways. Stumbling their way to a climax, it became a matter of saving the day in the midst of the ongoing Fazfest. Meanwhile, letting the dysfunctional and complicated dynamic of the characters play out for the sake of tension, the result is a mess that fails to offer any sense of conclusion, instead opting to kick the can down the road to another film.

Both unremarkable and uninspired, Five Nights At Freddy’s 2 merely goes through the motions on both sides of the camera. The direction is fine, but the stilted acting and awful script doesn’t do the film any favors. Either intentional or not, Hutcherson, Lail, and Rubio are on different islands acting off of one another, something that does not inspire engagement. On the other hands, some will argue that the main draw is Freddy and his crew. With the addition of the new Freddy’s location, the film offers a few more wrinkles in terms of characters but, for the most part, they serve as window dressing. Again, instead of leaning on its bench of animatronic characters, this sequel focuses more on backstory and messy character development than their activities, or as much as the film allows them to do with its 14A/PG-13 rating, which is not that much.

Five Nights At Freddy’s 2 is more of the same, for better or worse, becoming just as stilted and lifeless as its animatronic characters.

still courtesy of Universal Pictures

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Keith Noakes

The EIC of the coincidentally-named keithlovesmovies.com. A Canadian who prefers to get out of the cold and into the warmth of a movie theatre.