Nerdly » ‘Five Nights at Freddy’s 2’ Review

05th Dec2025

‘Five Nights at Freddy’s 2’ Review

by Matthew Turner

Stars: Josh Hutcherson, Elizabeth Lail, Piper Rubio, Wayne Knight, Matthew Lillard, Skeet Ulrich | Written by Scott Cawthorn | Directed by Emma Tammi

Based on the popular video game series, the first Five Nights at Freddy’s movie became a monster hit in 2023, despite largely lacklustre reviews. Now there’s a sequel, the unimaginatively titled Five Nights at Freddy’s 2 (Five More Nights at Freddy’s was right there), but it has failed to learn any of the lessons from the first film, and is just as disappointing, if not more so.

Directed by Emma Tammi (returning from the first film) and written by game creator Scott Cawthorn (also returning), the film begins with an ‘80s-set prologue, in which a young girl called Charlotte (Audrey Lynn-Marie) is killed by one of the animatronic animal monsters at Freddy Fazbear’s Pizzeria. The film then jumps forward twenty years and picks up after the events of the first film, with former security guard Mike (Josh Hutcherson) concerned about the bond that his younger sister Abby (Piper Rubio) appears to have with the animatronics, who she refers to as her “friends”.

Sure enough, Abby is tricked into letting the animatronics loose, and they are soon on a murderous rampage throughout the town. It transpires that Charlotte’s spirit bonded with a mascot figure called the Marionette (who looks copyright-threateningly close to Jigsaw), and is apparently in control of all the animatronic mayhem.

One of the main problems with the original Five Nights at Freddy’s was a ridiculous amount of completely unnecessary exposition. Far from rectifying that problem, the sequel doubles down on it, coming up with even more exposition and previously unrevealed backstory, none of which adds anything of interest to the story, other than a completely superfluous cameo by Skeet Ulrich, which feels like it’s only been included as a nod to Scream, given the presence of Scream co-star Matthew Lillard.

Another problem with the original film was that, having established the line-up of animatronic killers, they ended up barely appearing in their own movie. That should have been an easy problem for the sequel to fix, but no, it’s basically the same – despite the aforementioned murderous rampage, the monsters barely kill anybody.

On top of that, the kills are both poorly staged and unforgivably dull. Even the script’s most prominent kill is effectively neutered so that there’s no onscreen gore. As with the previous film, the sequel was a PG-13 in the US, and it’s a 15 in the UK, but don’t let that fool you, as this has very clearly been designed to appeal to a younger audience, and there’s not a trace of the red stuff.

The actors – including a returning Elizabeth Lail as Vanessa, now Mike’s would-be girlfriend – do the best they can under the circumstances, but they are poorly served by a decidedly dull script. Given the inherent ridiculousness of the set-up, a dash of humour might have livened things up a bit, but there are zero laughs.

There are other problems too. Tammi fails to deliver anything involving tension or suspense and there are far too many scenes of characters sitting at computer screens. There are also a number of things that just don’t make sense, such as the teacher (a slimmed down Wayne Knight) who has a vindictive grudge against Abby, for some unexplained reason.

Ultimately, the film’s biggest problem is its baffling lack of imagination when it comes to exploiting its own concept. That extends to the location choices, which are usually dark and dismal, rather than injecting some much needed colour to accentuate the monster costumes.

In short, Five Nights at Freddy’s 2 is just no fun at all, despite the potential in the set-up. With multiple killer robots on the loose, it should have been a no-brainer, instead it just has no brains. It will almost certainly be successful enough for a threequel though, so maybe they’ll get it right next time.