It was fun: 'Five Nights at Freddy's 2' (2025)

When I used to live in Wichita, Kansas, I loved watching movies at the Warren Theatre West, and I have a specific memory of one movie I saw there, less because of movie itself, but because of an interaction with the ticket seller.

The movie was Wes Craven's My Soul to Take, and she helpfully informed me that if I walked out in the first thirty minutes, I would be refunded. Not exactly reassuring me about my ticket choice that evening, but I had to wonder what people, exactly, were expecting from a "Dead Teenager Movie" from Wes "Nightmare on Elm Street" Craven.

I did not refund my ticket, and though I can't actually recall much from the movie (other than a bizarre scene involving a pooping papier mache condor), I still remember it fondly. It was fun, but what else did I expect from a Wes "Scream" Craven slasher picture?

Anyway, he's dead now.

But we're not here to review Wes "Music of the Heart" Craven's My Soul to Take, but instead director Emma Tammi's Five Nights at Freddy's 2, which currently has a paltry 16% "Rotten" rating on review aggregate site Rotten Tomatoes, which is somehow almost, but not quite, half the score of the first Five Night's at Freddy's, despite being a marked improvement. In fact, I rather enjoyed it.

For those somehow not aware, the Five Nights at Freddy's movies are based on a series of horror video games, in which players are put in the role of a night security man at an abandoned pizzeria that featured a group of cartoon animal mascots who were realized as giant animatronic suits. Unfortunately, the original owner of the pizzeria also happened to be a serial killer of children, and now those giant animatronic suits are animated by the ghosts of his victims. They wander the pizzeria, and will occasionally attack the player/night watchman if they are not paying enough attention by popping up and going boo. It's basically "Jump Scare But Also Furry Robots Are Uncanny: The Game".

This is also how the first movie played out, with Josh Hutcherson playing Mike the night watchman. However, the video games started gathering more and more of a convoluted backstory, not to mention more and more killer mascots as the series progressed, and already by the sequel, it's a very convoluted supernatural mess. Fans of the series seem to not only understand, but actually enjoy deciphering this convoluted mess in the video games (all the while throwing in their own outre theories), and power to them. A supernatural horror franchise will become infinitely more complex as time goes on, as various creatives make up rules on the fly to explain how the supernatural killer can accomplish the most recent over-the-top kill they've come up with. Trying to figure it all out will drive one mad, but, then, we all go a little mad sometimes.

And this is actually where the new movie improves things, because, while none of the kills were especially creative or even that graphic, I actually knew for a hundred percent sure, okay, that character is dead dead. I genuinely wasn't sure in some cases in the first movie. The first movie seemed scared of scaring the audience too much, but this sequel actually has appropriate levels of jump scares, and I even saw a little blood. They also really liked the squishy foley effects; even if we can't see the giant chicken robot crush a man's skull in her hands, we can certainly hear it. And then Chica the giant chicken robot, with the voice of Megan Fox, says something about "I see you have nothing in your head at all". She's no Freddy (no, the other Freddy) or Chucky, but I appreciate the effort she's putting in.

The animatronics in this movie are a different franchise store's version, plastic rather than furry. Apparently, they're known as the "Toy" versions to fans of the games. Rather than each Toy suit being possessed by a different child victim, this time there's only one ghost, a vengeful girl who died angry that her warnings about the killings were ignored by everyone, who mostly controls a new (and unfortunately not animal-based) animatronic known as the Marionette, which in turn controls the Toy animatronics. The titular Freddy is a bear, Bonnie is a blue rabbit, and Foxy the pirate fox is now a white and pink disassembled monstrosity known only as the Mangle. It cannot be stressed how good the mostly practical effects from Jim Henson's Creature Shop look, and the foley team, once again, adds nicely ominous robotic stompings to their every move. Well, except the scenes where they're being sneaky, of course. But that's just part of the game.

Chica, however, gets the lion's share of the screentime, as the ghost is trying to manipulate Mike's little sister, Abby (Piper Rubio), who made friends with the child ghosts last movie, into freeing the suits from their inability to leave the restaurant, and Chica was always her favorite (I'm more of a Foxy guy, myself). Meanwhile, since Mike is more concerned with just moving on from the trauma of last movie, Vanessa (Elizabeth Lail), a former police officer with a connection to the original killer, is the primary investigator of the mysteries in this new movie. There's a big revelation about her character near the end which entirely does not explain anything. Again.

More interesting are the side characters. Wayne Knight plays an incredibly unlikable science teacher unimpressed with Abby's attempts to recreate Chica's robotics, while Scream veteran Skeet Ulrich plays the father of the current ghost child. Much was made of the re-teaming of Ulrich with Matthew Lillard, an important character from the original movie who reappears in a flashback, but they don't actually ever appear together in a scene. The movie is very referential, with obvious nods to other horror franchises, with one person's bit part saying his line to the camera in a way that made me think I was supposed to know who he was? Hopefully it's well known to the FNAF fans online, because if he was a horror reference, will I be angry at myself if I missed it. My favorite, however, was a direct reference to a funny scene in the first movie, complete with The Romantics' "Talking In Your Sleep" on the soundtrack. It was cute.

That's what I took away the most. I don't know what people were expecting from a horror franchise sequel based on a video game, but as for me, well, it was fun.