THE STORY – One year has passed since the supernatural nightmare at Freddy Fazbear’s Pizza. Former security guard Mike has kept the truth from his 11-year-old sister, Abby, 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.
THE CAST – Josh Hutcherson, Elizabeth Lail, Piper Rubio, Freddy Carter, Theodus Crane, Wayne Knight, Teo Briones, Mckenna Grace, Skeet Ulrich & Matthew Lillard
THE TEAM – Emma Tammi (Director) & Scott Cawthon (Writer)
THE RUNNING TIME – 104 Minutes
The 2023 film adaptation of the video game “Five Nights at Freddy’s” was a hit. A huge hit. Despite being available to stream on Peacock on the same day it opened in theaters, it went on to gross over $130 million in the US alone. Even without this unquestionable success, it seemed inevitable that a sequel would follow. After all, there are over a dozen video games and spin-offs in the “Freddy’s” universe from which a film can snatch ideas. But the ultra-profitability of the first film has allowed the game series’ creator Scott Cawthon, who serves as the sole screenwriter of “Five Nights at Freddy’s 2,” to lean even harder on references, Easter eggs, and other elements of the extensive lore that he’s built across the past decade, in order to appeal first and foremost to fans of his games. After all, they’re the ones who’ve propelled a simple point-and-click video game into a horror-fantasy empire of almost Tolkien-sized proportions. And that’s great for them, but anyone else watching, even those who saw the previous film, will likely leave “Five Nights at Freddy’s 2,” at best, perplexed (even the title invites confusion; are we meant to do some simple math and infer that we’ll be spending 10 nights at Freddy’s?). Or they may have a reaction closer to this, a slowly increasing, dreadful suspicion followed by ultimate certainty that this is perhaps the worst film of the year.
The plot’s details are baffling, but in broad summation, it’s a simple premise. At the end of the previous film, the child serial killer William Afton (Matthew Lillard) was brought to bone-crunching unofficial justice at the hands of the possessed upright-walking animal animatronics in which he stored his victims’ bodies in the 1980s. Now, the trio of humans that helped avenge the murdered children, Mike (Josh Hutcherson), his kid sister Abby (Piper Rubio), and Afton’s grown-up daughter-turned-cop Vanessa (Elizabeth Lail), are working day by day to recover from these traumatic events. Abby misses her animatronic friends and desperately wants Mike to keep his promise to fix them. And Vanessa is haunted by visions of her evil father. At the same time, an amateur ghost-hunting team enters the original Freddy Fazbear’s Pizza, which has been long abandoned. This flagship restaurant, which seems to be bizarrely equidistant from Mike and Abby’s home as the franchise location from the first film, was the site of, you guessed it, the mysterious death of a child in the 80s. There, the ghost hunters discover a disturbing puppet (referred to as the Marionette), and their presence seems to awaken something truly malevolent within it.
There’s more, so much more, that unravels across the runtime of “Five Nights at Freddy’s 2.” Clearly, Cawthon wishes to keep his fans happy with references and callbacks to his games. Unfortunately, the story he’s crafted as a means to do so is downright mystifying. Perhaps the film’s most unexplainably bizarre aspect is the look of the main antagonist, the Marionette. The other robotic creatures that inhabit Freddy Fazbear’s Pizza are, in theory, designed in a way that at least intends to be cute and charming. After all, they have to be theoretically non-threatening enough for Abby not to see them as frightening immediately. And then there’s the Marionette, with claw-like hands, black-and-white striped limbs, and a vacant white face that resembles the uncanny masks of Japanese Noh theatre, complete with red, rosy cheeks and deep black lines that resemble waterfalls of tears pouring from its eye sockets. It stands in stark, almost comical contrast to the theme park-ready appearances of the other Fazbearian residents. And strangest of all, the film posits that the Marionette was a popular element of the original pizza location, as shown in the film’s 1982-set cold opening. Obviously, this character is pulled straight from the games, but its very existence destroys the ironically cheerful yet malevolent energy that the other Fazbear characters bring. Their friendly designs juxtaposed with their terrifying behavior is what makes the concept of “Five Nights at Freddy’s” so disturbingly effective in the first place. The idea that, in the world of the film, the Marionette would be a welcome sidekick to them, embraced by children and the parents that brought them to the pizza restaurant, is absurd. It would be like if the Chuck E. Cheese’s of our real world introduced a new character, and it was just the literal Babadook.
Not to mention, the explanation for how and why the Marionette is brought to life is just as ridiculous. It involves a dead character having a very strange reaction to their own murder, wherein they don’t blame their actual killer for their death but, instead, the witnesses. The actual execution of this narrative concept is unintentionally comical, thanks to some truly unfortunate make-up and character designs.
But enough about the puppet. To even begin to itemize all of the film’s leaps in logic and sense, both in-universe and common, would be futile. But an attempt can still be made. There’s the fact that nearly every human seems to lack peripheral vision and is unable to spot a seven-foot-tall, loudly mechanized bear sneaking up on them. Or that, in addition to the leading man, Mike, a new, completely separate character is introduced named Michael (a more up-on-the-lore friend once informed that this is a game reference… okay, fine, but the film doesn’t even call attention to the fact that two characters share a name). Or the complete trust that Abby has in the new animatronics, despite their altered appearances, implying that she learned absolutely nothing from the terrifying events of the previous film. But none of this seems to matter to Cawthon or returning director Emma Tammi, both of whom are clearly more than okay with making a film that serves merely as an “I recognize that” activation machine for the game’s fans.
And therein lies the rotten truth of this film’s existence. Like far too many modern movies adapted from another medium, it shows no interest in appealing to anyone who doesn’t already have a fairly robust knowledge of the property. General audiences are generally incurious, rejecting new artistic experiences in favor of the comfort of recognition, convenience, and nostalgia in a hectic, overstimulated world. And who can blame them, really? With the cost of living rising and the quality of life in this country decreasing with every White House press briefing, the average consumer typically wants simple stimulation rather than impactful art made with care or intelligence. When life is one giant question mark, people crave periods. But one can still have hope that at least a hint of integrity can worm its way into the most low-tier, craven entertainment products. Abandon any such hope if you buy a ticket to “Five Nights at Freddy’s 2”. There’s simply nothing of value here, not even the thrill of an adrenaline rush from a cheap jump scare. Any attempts at shock are hollow and laughable. The viewer is likely to leave the theater feeling similar to how Josh Hutcherson appears in this film, understandably checked out, vacant, and simply worn down.
