Film Review: FIVE NIGHTS AT FREDDY’S 2 (2025): This Disappointing Sequel Can’t Carry Its Own Weight Despite a Promising Start
Five Nights at Freddy’s 2 Review
Five Nights at Freddy’s 2 (2025) Film Review, a movie directed by Emma Tammi, written by Scott Cawthon and starring Josh Hutcherson, Piper Rubio, Elizabeth Lail, Matthew Lillard, Freddy Carter, Wayne Knight, Mckenna Grace, David Andrew Calvillo, Teo Briones, Audrey Lynn-Marie, Miriam Spumpkin, Han Soto, Grant Feely, Gavin Borders, Bentley Cooper, Carl Palmer, Ann Mahoney, Skeet Ulrich and Vivian Atencio.
Director Emma Tammi’s misfire, Five Nights at Freddy’s 2, gets off on the right foot, but quickly loses its balance in a mixed-up attempt at some wild and zany humor that doesn’t suit this horror film sequel well at all. Freddy Fazbear’s Pizza is a chain of video-game rooms/restaurants from yesteryear which showcases animatronic creatures who soon try to wreak havoc on those who get them angry. As easy as it may be to dismiss this film, it’s one of Universal’s biggest tentpoles and the property even inspired a Haunted House at the studio’s theme park in Orlando. An animatronic creature or two gets out into the world in this new picture which makes for some intriguing humor, but in all, this movie becomes bogged down by its exposition-heavy plot and disappointing performances.
While Mckenna Grace’s presence as a character named Lisa is interesting given the actress’s history and similar type of role in the recent Ghostbusters films, she’s, unfortunately, lost in the shuffle. What could have potentially been the movie’s most interesting part is written poorly and most of the plot development is so haphazard that the movie self-destructs almost immediately after an impressive opening sequence.
At the very beginning, we meet a spaced-out young girl named Charlotte (Audrey Lynn-Marie) who is consoled by Vanessa (Miriam Spumpkin). Something strange is going on at the Freddy Fazbear’s Pizza place and tragedy strikes. When years pass, Vanessa (now Elizabeth Lail) is dealing with her troubled past which includes memories of her crazed dad, William (Matthew Lillard of the Scream series). Josh Hutcherson portrays the central character, Mike, who is so dull that the movie needs to bring in virtually a half dozen other characters to hide the fact that Hutcherson can’t carry the movie on his own. Piper Rubio as the young and spunky Abby (who is the animatronic creatures’ biggest fan) once again excels in a performance far better than the movie itself.
Wayne Knight appears as Mr. Berg who is, simply put, creature bait and although Knight gets to have some fun in the movie, his presence feels totally unnecessary in a movie that throws in so many plot twists that it becomes a soap opera of a horror movie and a deadly dull one at that. To keep things interesting, the movie borrows another veteran of the Scream franchise, Skeet Ulrich, as a father named Henry. Ulrich also gets lost in the shuffle as the movie shifts its focus to the possessed animatronic creatures (e.g. one is called Chica and looks like a big chicken) whose personalities are more defined than they were the last time out, but the characterizations still fall short in the grand scheme of things.
Abby has the most personality of the humans, yet the movie surprisingly doesn’t always make her the center of attraction as the movie meanders towards characters like Mckenna Grace’s in an obvious attempt to try to stir up interest at the box-office, but a couple of the lesser-known stars are better than Grace and Hutcherson who basically falter in their bland roles.
This movie has a mid-end credits scene that all but promises another installment of this series, and one hopes that the filmmakers learn some of the lessons this movie teaches us about overstuffing a simple premise with material that doesn’t need to be present to make the movie entertaining to watch. If this film just let the creatures do their thing and bond with Abby, we would have had an intelligent premise, but instead, it gets bogged down by the boring humans (besides Abby) who have no backbone and though Lail tries the hardest out of the adult cast members, she’s stuck with stale, mediocre character decisions in a film that feels like it would have been dated back in the 1990’s.
Five Nights at Freddy’s 2 is an overt attempt at creating a scary movie out of recycled material that has played much better in the past whether it be in the video game the movie has based itself on or in the first movie which was not a good film but makes this one look even worse in comparison. It takes more than large animatronic creatures to build tension and the supernatural elements needed to be fleshed out considerably more to make the new movie work as passable entertainment. That being said, fans of the original might find something to enjoy here and will probably like the way the movie’s world-building extends the characters beyond the basics to include some substance that would have worked better with a stronger, more polished script. It’s a no-go on this one.
Rating: 5/10
Leave your thoughts on this Five Nights at Freddy’s 2 review and the film below in the comments section. Readers seeking to support this type of content can visit our Patreon Page and become one of FilmBook’s patrons. Readers seeking more film reviews can visit our Movie Review Page, our Movie Review Twitter Page, and our Movie Review Facebook Page. Want up-to-the-minute notifications? FilmBook staff members publish articles by Email, Mobile App, Google News, Apple News, Feedly, Twitter, Faceboo
Related Articles
