At the least “5 Nights at Freddy’s 2” has one factor going for it: it’s higher than the unique. However contemplating 2023’s “5 Nights at Freddy’s” was already not nice to start with, that’s a low bar. Exterior of the impressively correct online game animatronics, that first movie evaporated from the cultural reminiscence the second audiences walked out of the theater. This sequel, arriving two years later, tries to course-correct by returning to what made the video games efficient within the first place: it truly makes the animatronics scary.
And to its credit score, it principally succeeds. “5 Nights at Freddy’s 2” leans into the mechanics of the video games, builds suspense by means of management, confinement, and restricted visibility, and dangles simply sufficient lore and easter eggs to maintain the fanbase happy. It additionally shamelessly units up a number of sequel hooks by the point the credit roll. There’s even a pseudo “Scream” reunion with temporary appearances by Skeet Ulrich and Matthew Lillard, although the truth that they by no means share a scene collectively looks like a borderline cinematic crime.
The issue, as soon as once more, is that none of this makes any logical sense. “5 Nights at Freddy’s 2” operates on a dream logic that feels much less like intentional surrealism and extra like fundamental storytelling negligence. Characters make choices that defy widespread sense, folks exist solely to ship exposition or wander into body so a large animatronic can drag them right into a room and slaughter them, and the movie by no means even makes an attempt to clarify how these large, roaming machines transfer freely with out anybody noticing.
Nonetheless, by PG-13 horror requirements, the kills are satisfactory, and director Emma Tammi, alongside sequence creator Scott Cawthon, sometimes finds actual stress by merely letting the animatronics exist in an area. After they’re stalking, lurking, or rising from the partitions of the pizzeria, the film briefly turns into what it ought to have been all alongside. The core concept stays unbeatable: Chuck E. Cheese, however haunted. It’s an ideal premise. The movie simply can’t cease overexplaining it.
Each time characters begin speaking, the film collapses below the burden of its personal lore. Cawthon appears trapped between servicing diehard followers and onboarding newcomers, and as a substitute of committing to a clear story, he threads collectively a number of half-baked ones. The result’s a film that continuously gestures towards larger mythology with out ever grounding itself in something emotionally or narratively coherent.
The opening 1982 prologue introduces new mythology whereas digging deeper into Vanessa, performed by Elizabeth Lail, the daughter of child-murdering franchise boogeyman William Afton, performed once more by Matthew Lillard. We’re launched to the Marionette and one other fan favourite character earlier than the movie jumps twenty years forward, the place Mike, performed by Josh Hutcherson, continues to be caring for his in some way decades-younger sister Abby, performed by Piper Rubio, who now deeply misses the murderous possessed animatronics. Sure, actually.
Nearly nobody on this movie behaves like an precise human being. There’s a cartoonishly snobbish science instructor, amusingly performed by Wayne Knight, whose total persona revolves round successful a robotics competitors as a result of the varsity is on a three-year successful streak. This competitors is scheduled for a Saturday evening, at the very same time as an enormous carnival known as “Fazzfest,” and he threatens his college students with educational failure in the event that they don’t prioritize the robotic contest. It’s the sort of plotting that feels much less like heightened actuality and extra like whole narrative laziness.
That mentioned, when the film works, it actually works. The moments the place the animatronics break away from the pizzeria and invade the surface world are genuinely efficient, giving Tammi the house to create actual suspense and sustained dread. However identical to the primary movie, these moments are temporary and surrounded by clunky dialogue and lifeless human interactions. Cawthon nonetheless can not write plausible folks, and the movie stays extra fascinated by references than in making us care who lives or dies.
You’ll be able to really feel the film continuously bending itself round fan service, whereas additionally surprisingly deviating from established lore in methods that may most likely thrill some followers and enrage others. However none of that actually issues. These movies are low cost to make and reliably explode on the field workplace, usually clearing a whole lot of tens of millions of {dollars} with ease.
On some stage, it’s onerous to not respect what this franchise represents. Like “Noticed” and “Paranormal Exercise,” “5 Nights at Freddy’s” has change into a gateway horror sequence for a era. It trains youngsters to indicate up for films and expertise communal worry in a theater.
Effectively, they’ll have this franchise.
FIVE NIGHTS AT FREDDY’S 2 is now taking part in in theaters.