Five Nights at Freddy’s 2 — Review

Movie adaptations of video games get a bad rep, but there’s no denying that even the not-so-good ones have their fans, such as the Lara Croft: Tomb Raider duology with Angelina Jolie (2001 – 2003), writer and director Paul W. S. Anderson’s Resident Evil films with star Milla Jovovich  (2002 – 2026), Mortal Kombat (1995), Uncharted (2022), and more recently, Minecraft (2025).

Narratively and structurally, these movies aren’t the best representation of their source material, but for fans, they worked at channelling the spirit of the games, and didn’t care much about the lack of coherence or logic – games are meant to be fun, and the same applies to movies based on the games. In comes Five Nights at Freddy’s (2023), a film based on the first game in Scott Cawthon’s eponymous video game series and media franchise that, in all honesty, makes no sense.

The supernatural series has players survive five nights in a location while uncovering secrets and fending off attacks from homicidal animatronic characters. Throw in a serial killer, William Afton and his family of homicidal children, and you have an American lore that combines science, supernatural, and an audience of children who cannot seem to get enough of the 11-game title.

This sequel, set a year after the events of the first film, has Josh Hutcherson’s (The Hunger Games franchise) Mike Schmidt rebuilt life with his young sister, Abby (Piper Rubio), even as he seeks to help Vanessa Shelly (Elizabeth Lail, You) find balance after the death of her crazed father, William (Matthew Lillard, Scream) at the long-defunct Freddy Fazbear’s Pizza parlour. But a new evil emerges in the form of the Marionette, a supernatural being released by a security guard from a dilapidated pizza restaurant location that predates the pizza parlour. This entity targets Abby, which brings Mike and Vanessa into the fray again, with the former discovering that Vanessa is still hiding secrets.

This movie…. doesn’t quite make sense when it comes to character motivations, but let’s be honest – no one is in it for the story, much less play the games for their narrative consistency. Instead, audiences at the premiere screening were clearly fans of the games because anytime something game-related was revealed, cheers would ring out in the cinema hall. 

Case in point: when Mike is revealed to be the name of a security guard (not Schmidt, but another character with the same name), but prefers to be called Michael, it incited resounding applause and shouts from enthusiasts. As the massive surprise box and subsequently the Marionette come into focus, the excitement grew in volume, reaching a fever pitch when the original animatronics, who were possessed by the souls of Abby’s friends killed by William, reappeared to protect the young girl – reminiscent of the moment when Captain Marvel first appeared at the end of Avengers: Endgame (2019) to destroy Sanctuary II.

Five Nights at Freddy’s 2, which expands on the lore of the game, taps into fan expectations of having more supernatural animatronics wreaking havoc on the town, and there’s blood, violence, and a death so brutal, it will blow your mind. Don’t ask why no one can hear the hulking costumed robot animals walking down a quiet hall until heads turn to register their presence, which is then followed by loud footsteps made by the giant robots. Were the robots tiptoeing before?    

Similarly, don’t gawk at how they can enter a vehicle or hitch a ride on top of one without anyone realising it. These are monsters with giant animal faces whose eyes light up because bad mojo is about to happen. Mike (not Michael) and Vanessa do their best to navigate the new circumstances, as Vanessa reveals more about the dead-girl-turned-the-Marionette Charlotte, who’s been discovered by Lisa (McKenna Grace, Ghostbusters: Afterlife), a paranormal investigator. 

Alas, the scene-stealing Grace appears in what can only be described as an extended cameo before the film shoots back to the Marionette, who, after being killed as a child, decides that uncaring parents are to blame and wants to protect the young by taking out the adults. The same goes for Skeet Ulrich (Scream), who also cameos as Charlotte’s father, and it’s disappointing that he didn’t share a scene with Lillard, his Scream co-star, in Five Nights at Freddy’s 2.

The one cool moment fans would applaud is when Mike is in the security room of the new pizza place, trying to track and disable the animatronics invading the town, while being accosted by other prototype animatronics whose behaviour mirror that from the game, during which the same presentation from the source material is preserved. The robots appear silently out of nowhere, and as Mike turns his head, the camera shifts from having nothing in front of him to an immediate appearance of a robot right up his face, just like in the game.

Heck, he even places an animatronic face plate in front of him to trick the other robots into thinking he is also one of them – a faithful, neat nod to its roots. Again, the film makes no sense, and this tension is unbelievably inconsequential (the scene is played for laughs, after all), but would likely be appreciated by fans, who, during the screening, were clapping at seeing something move from the virtual world to reel life.

While Five Nights at Freddy’s 2 leaves many questions unanswered at the end of it, it manages to tease what’s to come, and series veterans will get a kick out of the post-credits scene, which practically reveals who the next antagonist is, without actually showing who it is.

But if you hear the way one of Abby’s friends says it, you will definitely know who he is going to be.

HSALS

Hsals needs more space in his house, and more money in his bank account to pay for all the toys, collectibles and other geek related items that companies are churning out. Free-time? Girlfriend? Who’s got time for those?