How do you top “Five Nights at Freddy’s,” a video game movie adaptation about murderous anthropomorphic robots? If it’s a battle of the ridiculous, the answer is pretty obvious: “Five Nights at Freddy’s 2.”
The 2023 sequel builds on the scary, weird bones of the original, expanding Freddy’s cinematic universe with an even more shocking presentation. One poor actor says, “I don’t know what happened. I feel sick.” We feel you, sister.
“Five Nights at Freddy’s 2” assumes you’ve seen the first film, so stick with that before trying to digest the latest, which continues to unpack game lore all the way through the closing credits. It even arrogantly sets the table for “Five Nights at Freddy’s 3” without earning a second one.
Director Emma Tammy returns – this time using a script from the game’s developer, Scott Cawthon – and the cast debuts: former security guard Mike, police officer Vanessa and Mike’s 11-year-old sister, Abby.
Abby wants nothing better than to reunite with her Chuck E. Cheese-like animatronic friends – Freddy Fazbear, Bonnie, Chica and Foxy. Her evil science teacher hates her and she’s awkward, mostly because she craves the company of four ghostly robots. Therapy for all!
The sequel gets praise for introducing a genuinely scary creature among the decidedly non-creepy, bow-tie wearing, big-eyed animatronics – The Marionette, a genuinely disturbing guy with a mask, who has rosy red cheeks and a body with elongated arms. But the filmmakers stumble after losing him in the machinery. Till the end it is not even clear who is bad and who is good.
Trauma runs through “Five Nights at Freddy’s 2” and is largely an influence of the first film. Vanessa hasn’t quite dealt with the fact that her dad caused this whole murderous situation, Mike is trying to move on from the fear of watching Pizza Parlor entertainment celebrities murder people and Abby is a mess, leaving a note for her brother that reads: “I’m gone to fix my friends.”
The filmmakers don’t really decide for a second whether Freddy, Bonnie, Chica, and Foxy are overly evil or actually friendly, creating existential confusion. They layer on movie clichés like thick pepperoni slices: old-fashioned fragile music boxes, flickering flashlights, cracked glasses and the fear of the refrigerator door slamming. At one point, Megan Fox provides the voice for Chica. Would you notice? no way.
As should be the case with sequels these days, we get an extra batch of these spoiled Care Bears – they come in waves – and there’s a strange moment when Vanessa travels back to her evil father’s mind palace, which seems to be an excuse to hire Matthew Lillard again. This time the animatronics are lumbering like creaky dinosaurs, but pounce incredibly invisible like a leopard and can apparently outrun a mid-sized sedan.
It’s an incoherent mess, something that used to happen on straight to DVD. “Five Nights at Freddy’s 2” has a special after-school atmosphere, with no real scares and no real awareness of what should happen. “What kind of kid would want to come here?” Mike asks. In fact.
Universal Pictures’ release “Five Nights at Freddy’s 2,” which opens in theaters Friday, has been given a PG-13 rating by the Motion Picture Association for violent content, terror and some language. Running time: 104 minutes. Zero stars out of four.
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