Blumhouse’s sequel to its hit adaptation of Scott Cawthon’s Five Nights at Freddy’s aims to please its fans, and director Emma Tammi ups the puppet slasher ante in Five Nights at Freddy’s 2.
Building on the cinematic world of the franchise, video game creator Cawthon returns to script the continuing story of Schmidt siblings Mike (Josh Hutcherson) and Abby (Piper Rubio), who are dealing with the events of the first film in very different ways: the older wants to move on, while the younger regales her classmates with their survival story and her puppet “friends.”
Their crazed aunt, who also survived the animatronic attack, went on a tell-all spree about her harrowing experience. She got so much attention that people started a “FazFest” to dress up as the haunted animatronics, glorifying their nostalgia for a place where some really terrible things happened. But apparently the town is totally okay with sweeping things under the rug, as the film’s cold open introduces the death that started it all at the original Freddy Fazbear’s Pizza location. That’s where the game lore and the film lore start a tug-of-war that hampers the film’s place as its own story.
Vanessa (Elizabeth Lail) brings video game canon to the film thanks to her trauma from growing up with a kid-killer dad. Matthew Lillard returns as William Afton in Vanessa’s memories to haunt and fill in her past dating back to his first kill: Vanessa’s friend Charlotte, who happened to be obsessed with the creepy marionette who directs the animatronics. The dreamworld allows Five Nights at Freddy’s 2 to drop in lots of exposition; for me, as a non-gamer, it mostly worked—until the last act, at least.
Five Nights at Freddy’s 2 shines when Abby is the focus. Rubio carries the heart of the film, especially for new fans of the series. I grew up going to Chuck E. Cheese and loving shows like Goosebumps, and I would have been around Abby’s age in the era of the film—the 2000s. Sometimes it can seem like gateway, nostalgic horror is stuck on showcasing boyhood in the ’70s and ’80s. But with Abby, we get a ’90s perspective, and Tammi captures a girlhood many of us experienced; in that regard, seeing Abby live those nightmares come true with Rubio’s pure oddball charm and love for her ghost friends is the film’s biggest strength.
When a mysterious Faztalker (think haunted Speak & Spell) convinces Abby that her ghost friends need her help, she runs away and becomes a pawn in the game of a new, more sinister ghost: the Marionette. Vanessa needing to overcome her past is key in helping Mike (back at the iconic security desk) stop the big bad from carrying out carnage on the whole town and save Abby from being fooled into endangering them all. Five Nights at Freddy’s 2 finds a clever way for the animatronics to get their kills in. In the first film, it was Abby’s babysitter and her friends trying to sabotage Mike, and here it’s a group of paranormal investigators led by McKenna Grace as Lisa, the face of the Spectral Scoopers, whose fate is more twisted than just a Drew Barrymore-in-Scream demise.
Speaking of the ’90s slasher, Five Nights at Freddy’s 2 gives us a bit of a reunion when Lillard’s fellow Ghostface, Skeet Ulrich, pops up. He plays Henry Emily, whose past is deeply tied to Freddy’s in ways that set up mysteries to be solved in a potential third film.
While that’s exciting, especially if you know a little about the games, it also gets a bit convoluted. Henry knows how to calm the Marionette, and his connections to Afton are teased relentlessly, but they don’t quite pay off unless you stay through the end credits. As a Scream fan, I was hoping to at least see Afton and Henry share some flashback screentime.
Thankfully, things get back on track when Five Nights at Freddy’s 2 gets back to doing what it does best: puppet mayhem, especially when it’s propelled by Abby’s storyline. When Abby shows up at her science fair with her animatronic friend Toy Chica (iconically voiced by Megan Fox), we get more dementedly delightful, showstopping animatronic violence. There’s quite an homage to Amblin horror in the school sequence, complete with a surprise cameo, but the MVPs of the show are the core Freddy’s animatronics. Under Tammi’s vision, they nail that no-holds-barred horror for kids that will hopefully inspire more genre fans to emerge from the youngest pop-culture generation.
The Jim Henson Creature Shop really outdid itself with the puppets in this one, and Tammi showcases the action with such a good eye for jump scares and horror that your imagination can fill in the more gruesome details, in the tradition of, say, Gremlins (this is still PG-13 fare). And that outshines the abruptness of the film’s ending, which gets overtaken by video game storylines. Fans have been waiting for those elements, sure, but in the context of the film, they shortchange Abby’s arc in ways we hope don’t bench her if a third film happens.
Overall, Five Nights at Freddy’s 2 is filled with great gateway non-stop scares and continues to solidify itself as this generation’s horror saga to watch—that is, as long as it doesn’t commit only to fan service for the future of the franchise.
Five Nights at Freddy’s 2 opens in theaters December 5.
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