Bad pizza is still pizza, and for die-hard fans of Scott Cawthon’s viral horror video games, “Five Nights at Freddy’s 2” should be satisfying enough. Still, swapping empty calories for real artistic fuel (something the film industry desperately needs right now), Blumhouse’s fine-enough follow-up to its hit adaptation from 2023 looks and feels like a kind of imitation cheese.
“Five Nights at Freddy’s 2” isn’t mimicking the earlier movie so much as it is parroting the idea of genre storytelling itself. That kind of trope-laden, paint-by-numbers terror can be a tough sell for cinephiles with even beginner’s knowledge of slasher canon, but judging by the original’s movie’s massive box office and ever-zealous fandom, it’ll still be “pizza” to them.
Cawthon tackles the script solo this time, mostly to his haunted animatronics’ detriment. Director Emma Tammi returns as well, steering the star-studded cast — including returners Josh Hutcherson, Elizabeth Lail, and Piper Rubio — like a fleet of bumper cars traveling a road full of plot holes. Clever winks to the games and the digital culture that’s erupted around them since (“Freddy’s” is particularly popular on social media live streams) can’t account for the disconnect between the story’s vexing supernatural mechanics and weak human heart.
It’s been a year since Mike (Hutcherson) agreed to work the night shift at Freddy Fazbear Pizza, a creepy abandoned restaurant with a dark past that’s illuminated in the new film’s prologue set in the 1980s. Neither Mike nor his younger sister Abby (Rubio) have been back to the disastrous scene of the first film since police officer/love interest Vanessa (Lail) helped them escape the misunderstood clutches of Freddy, Bonnie, Chica, Foxy, and Mr. Cupcake.
Only evil some of the time, “Freddy’s” main attractions used to run on good old-fashioned engineering. These days, they’re frequently inhabited by ghosts — all of them the spirits of children who were murdered by Vanessa’s deranged father, William Afton (Matthew Lillard). He’s dead now too, but Cawthon’s script resuscitates him by digging deeper into the paranormal lore of the villain and his pizzeria. Forcing the trauma-centric arcs too many horror survivors get saddled with today, Mike and Vanessa face dark dreams that say their fight isn’t over.
Cute in a precocious and kind of creepy way, 11-year-old Abby is fine by comparison. More than coping well, she’s actually ready to get back to Freddy’s. She sees the freakishly big robots and the dead kids living inside them (whose human names she doesn’t even know, by the way?) as “her friends.” They’re all offline now but the gang could be up and running just as soon as Abby convinces Mike to go back and help with the repair job.
Of course, Mike would prefer his little sister not be crushed by the possessed remnants of an off-brand Chuck E. Cheese and he says no. But it’s not long before the school science fair convinces Abby she can tackle the problem herself — no matter what nasty thing her awful robotics teacher Mr. Berg (Wayne Knight) has to say about her aptitude for STEM. Soon, Abby is speeding into the night on her bike headed for a Freddy’s visit you know has to end badly.
The scene would seem ripped from “E.T.” or Stephen King’s “It” if it had any cinematic sensibility. Tammi’s vision as a director falters early and often, following Cawthon’s muddy script through a clumsy puzzle that robs its characters of common sense and routinely returns them to an increasingly uninteresting location where they have no compelling reason to be.
Yes, a young girl needs friends and even hulking metal ones should count for something. But Abby’s relationship to the deceased kids at Freddy’s never lands as sincere, side-stepping the ethereal humanity of similar scenes in movies from “The Black Phone” to “Coraline,” making room for even more ham-fisted exposition. (Maddeningly direct and yet infuriatingly confusing, this is a good “second-screen” movie because it doesn’t make sense when you watch it either way.)
A few days earlier, a crew of paranormal investigators, helmed by the spunky Lisa (Mckenna Grace), came to the restaurant and awakened a different, more malevolent presence lurking inside. Save for a few extra blood spatters, the gore is still only ever implied in “Freddy’s” and keeping all the lethal action offscreen gets old fast. Several new characters from the games — chief among them, a gigantic marionette with a deeply unnerving face — carry just enough interest to sustain your attention for roughly half the feature. The sequel is shorter than the original film, running 1 hour and 44 minutes. But it gets slower and worse as it goes.
Despite an admirable commitment to world-building, Cawthon doesn’t do so well with the cast’s human additions. Lisa and Mr. Berg could’ve injected a little more fun into Abby, Mike, and Vanessa’s surprisingly bleak tale of recovery and revenge. But casting the “Seinfeld” legend formerly known as Newman doesn’t result in a single funny line from the beloved sitcom actor. Instead, the movie squanders Knight’s talent for delivery and hands him an awkward slapstick bit that feels like work just to watch.
Grace gets more to do as Lisa but it’s just not enough of the megawatt star, whose casting excited plenty of non-“Freddy’s” fans before now. They’ll be disappointed to see the actress egregiously sidelined, given limited character development in an ultimately VFX-heavy part that treats her like a very expensive, charismatic prop. Horror heads were even more stoked to see Lillard and Skeet Ulrich — who plays the dad of a former Freddy’s victim — working together for the first time since “Scream.” But the beloved Ghostface boys don’t get a scene together and their individual skill sets go to waste thanks to Tammi’s strangely timid direction.
Editors Timothy Alverson and Derek Larsen do their job by at least keeping up the pace, but cinematographer Lyn Moncrief doesn’t do “Freddy’s” any favors with the shot framing. Emotional moments fall flat and jump-scares go slack as actors are routinely pushed too far from the lens, or worse, shown at such a severe angle it hides much of their craft from view. Lillard in particular takes huge swings during a hallucination sequence with Vanessa that would be much cooler if a tiny fraction of the anguish in his voice was adequately shown on screen.
That said, “Five Nights at Freddy’s 2” is still a serviceable step-up for all involved. If you liked the first film or you’re a fan of the games, you’ll have a decent time at this one; thank you for coming to the movies and buying those gigantic Fozzy popcorn buckets, truly! As for the rest of you, skip this and go see “Bugonia” or another of the year’s best movies when you want more serious artistic nourishment. Nothing beats bad pizza like exceptional pizza, and you’ll know the difference when its served on screen.
Grade: C-
From Blumhouse, “Five Nights at Freddy’s 2” is now playing in theaters.
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