Five Nights at Freddy's 2

Five Nights at Freddy's 2 arrives with the weight of its huge fan base and that of a first installment that felt more like a long prologue than a full-fledged horror movie. What immediately stands out in this second chapter is how fragmented the ambitions behind this franchise have become. Screenwriter Scott Cawthon, now working solo, enriches the sequel with a dense story, references, contradictory rules, and an almost comical supernatural backdrop, while director Emma Tammi attempts to inject visual energy into a story that constantly buckles under the weight of its own convolutions. The result is a film that, in some ways, moves faster and more awkwardly than its predecessor, like an animatronic whose joints have been oiled just enough to allow it to sprint, but not enough to prevent it from collapsing against the nearest wall. What the film retains is its particular appeal: an uncompromising commitment to its fans, even if it means losing all other passengers along the way.

The film opens with a surprisingly dark prologue set in 1982, following young Charlotte, played with genuine innocence by Audrey Lynn-Marie, who desperately tries to alert adults to a kidnapping taking place before her eyes. Instead, she is ignored by all the adults around her, a decision so implausible that it almost feels like an exercise in nightmarish logic. But the horror sets in: Charlotte's death is brutal, and her spirit becomes bound to the Puppet, a lanky, disturbing doll with hollow eyes and a sad face, creating the film's strongest visual idea. When the story jumps forward twenty years to find Mike, played by Josh Hutcherson, Abby, played by his sister Piper Rubio, and Vanessa, played by Elizabeth Lail, still traumatized, the film attempts to shift from tragedy to an episodic puzzle, but quickly gets tangled up in the very tradition it hopes to develop. The Puppet has thematic potential, but the script repeatedly undermines it with inconsistent rules and confusing logical leaps, giving the impression that the film was conceived from a wiki page rather than a real script.

 If there's one thing this franchise understands, it's the strange emotional power that animatronics wield over fans. Once again created by Jim Henson's Creature Shop, Freddy, Chica, Bonnie, Foxy, and the new Toy variants move with a tactile weight that is often more impressive than the film surrounding them. The scenes where Abby reconnects with her friends, or those where the animatronics venture beyond the pizzeria for the first time, have a strange charm, halfway between nostalgia and horror-tinged spectacle. Even the puppet, despite sometimes clumsy visual effects, exudes a grim menace reminiscent of creepypasta legends and early internet-fueled nightmares. Yet Emma Tammi's direction rarely takes full advantage of her cast of mechanical monsters. Too many sequences rely on sudden, loud jumps, the PG-13 rating pushes the violence off-screen where it loses all its impact, and the film hesitates to commit to either kitsch chaos or an atmosphere of terror. It feels like a film that is afraid to explore the very imagery that should define it.

The performances fall into a strange middle ground between sincere investment and tonal disconnect. Josh Hutcherson plays Mike as a man who is always one step behind the plot, always reacting to revelations that the audience saw coming minutes earlier. Elizabeth Lail provides some of the film's only emotionally grounded moments, particularly in Vanessa's visions of her father Matthew Lillard, whose brief return remains one of the franchise's few truly unsettling elements. As for Piper Rubio, she is required to oscillate between a vulnerable child and a robotic knowledge-transmission system, a disconnect that becomes increasingly noticeable as the film asks her to carry more emotional weight than her character allows. Freddy Carter stands out surprisingly in the role of the enigmatic security guard at the original pizzeria, with a performance so discreetly menacing that the film seems significantly less interesting when he disappears from the narrative. And yes, the much-discussed reunion between Matthew Lillard and Skeet Ulrich exists only in the casting announcement; they never share the screen, a missed opportunity so glaring that it almost seems like an inside joke gone wrong.

One of the most curious qualities of this sequel is that it feels more like playing a video game cutscene than watching a movie. Characters acquire key items exactly when they need them, the geography bends to their convenience (or disappears altogether), and walkie-talkies appear at such suspicious moments that you almost expect to see the message “Objective updated” flash up on the screen. The scenes play out in a loop (searching corridors, checking cameras, waiting for something to pop up on screen) without any increase in tension or emotional stakes. At one point, Mike draws a music box on a piece of paper and brandishes it like a weapon, a moment so conceptually confusing that it transcends criticism and becomes unintentional comedy. The film does, however, offer one genuinely enjoyable sequence when Mckenna Grace's team of ghost hunters accidentally releases the Puppet, creating the moment when the film comes closest to merging the mechanics of the game with cinematic tension. But these flashes of inspiration are swallowed up by a second half that completely abandons narrative progression in favor of a sequel.

If the film fails as horror, it collapses even more completely as storytelling. The introduction of FazFest, an inexplicable town festival celebrating a series of child murders that everyone suddenly remembers with nostalgia, feels like a subplot designed solely to set up an element that the film never delivers. The rules established in the first film are rewritten, new rules are ignored moments after being introduced, and entire storylines evaporate into thin air. By the time the animatronics arrive at the festival site, the film abruptly changes direction, rushing toward an ending that struggles to be considered a climax, before moving on to one of the most disappointing sequel announcements in recent years. It's not that the film refuses to resolve anything, it's that it never really begins the process. This isn't structure, it's stalling.

And yet, despite its incoherence, Five Nights at Freddy's 2 offers glimpses of a better film struggling to emerge, moments when the tactile charm of the animatronics, the melancholy of Charlotte's story, or the unsettling calm of the abandoned pizzeria briefly connect to create a strange atmosphere. In one scene, Abby hears a Speak & Spell-like toy whisper “Come find us” in a distorted synthetic voice, and for a moment, the film taps into the strange sweetness and sadness that made the games resonate with so many players. It's also clear that Emma Tammi and her screenwriter Scott Cawthon understand the emotional relationship that young fans have with these characters: the collective thrill of recognition, the comfort of tradition, the excitement of seeing familiar mechanical faces come to life on a giant screen. The film is undeniably intended for them.

Five Nights at Freddy's 2 feels less like a sequel and more like an update to the franchise, a content patch disguised as a feature film, installed not to significantly expand the universe, but to set the stage for the third installment. As a cinematic work, it is frustrating in its lack of consistency and narrative inertia. As a work of fan culture, it functions more like a checklist: cameos, references, prototypes, scale models, puppets, FazFest posters, post-credits scene. Some will find comfort in this familiarity; others will lament the absence of genuine terror, inventiveness, or emotional depth. The result is a film haunted by its untapped potential, much like its characters are haunted by vengeful spirits.

Five Nights at Freddy's 2
Directed by Emma Tammi
Written by Scott Cawthon
Based on Five Nights at Freddy's by Scott Cawthon
Produced by Scott Cawthon, Jason Blum
Starring Josh Hutcherson, Elizabeth Lail, Piper Rubio, Freddy Carter, Theodus Crane, Wayne Knight, Teo Briones, Mckenna Grace, Skeet Ulrich, Matthew Lillard
Cinematography: Lyn Moncrief
Edited by Timothy Alverson, Derek Larsen
Production companies: Blumhouse Productions, Scott Cawthon Productions
Distributed by Universal Pictures
Release date: December 3, 2025 (France), December 5, 2025 (United States)
Running time: 104 minutes

Seen on December 4, 2025 at Gaumont Disney Village, Theater 5, seat A18

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