The terrifying animatronics of the Five Nights at Freddy's franchise are back, but according to critics, the only thing frightening about the new sequel is its sheer incompetence. Five Nights at Freddy's 2, the follow-up to the 2023 Halloween box office smash, has been slammed as one of the year's worst films, criticised for its shoddy construction, careless writing, and baffling lack of a conclusion.
A Clumsy and Confusing Narrative
Returning director Emma Tammi and sole screenwriter Scott Cawthon, the game's creator, have crafted a film that lumbers along with the same heavy-footed awkwardness as its ghost-possessed restaurant mascots. The plot struggles with basic cinematic language, drawing constant attention to its inept handling of scene transitions and logical storytelling.
One cited example involves the contrived isolation of a mean science teacher, played by Wayne Knight, so he can be murdered. The sequence relies on a nonsensical phone call about forgotten keys, with details that hold no weight in the broader narrative. The film appears to assemble random elements in the naive hope they resemble a coherent movie, a approach executed with a baffling calmness likely born from the first film's massive success with younger audiences.
Returning Faces and Hollow Lore
The sequel continues the story of Mike (Josh Hutcherson), his sister Abby (Piper Rubio), and officer Vanessa (Elizabeth Lail). A 1982-set prologue introduces a new animatronic threat, The Marionette, which preys on Abby's lingering fondness for the creatures from the first film. The plot shuffles characters between nondescript locations, including an abandoned restaurant with an underused water-tunnel ride, while the animatronics occasionally clank into the outside world.
Despite these opportunities for suspense, the film consistently fails to deliver. A key scene mimicking gameplay involves Mike frantically clicking through a security console in 2002 to find a miraculously powerful wifi signal to disable the robots—a concept the film expects audiences to accept without question.
A Soulless Patchwork of Influences
The film makes bizarre, shallow attempts to synthesise other horror classics. It casts Matthew Lillard (whose character died previously) and Skeet Ulrich, famously co-stars in Scream, yet never lets them share a scene. The Marionette's motive of targeting neglectful parents feels like a diluted, AI-generated summary of A Nightmare on Elm Street, utterly lacking that film's iconic imagery or thematic depth about inherited trauma.
The critique concludes that Cawthon seems unqualified to write authentic human experience, instead protecting a franchise. Five Nights at Freddy's 2 feels like an obligatory instalment rather than a real film, culminating in a shrug of a quasi-cliffhanger that doesn't provide a proper ending. The review sardonically notes that the film's souvenir popcorn bucket is likely more entertaining than the feature itself.
Five Nights at Freddy's 2 is out in cinemas across the UK on 5 December 2024.
