RIOTUS

Back in 2023, Five Nights at Freddy’s shocked a lot of people with just how successful it was. Making almost three hundred million at the box office, the video game adaptation really connected with a younger audience that most in the film press don’t have a clue about. The popular game series that transformed well into a great tween to middle school age horror movie that’s not too crazy in the visuals and was able to give you a story in a way and pace that worked for the uninitiated into this world of haunted 80’s Chuck E. Cheese animatronics. Personally, for me, I never played those games because those things frighten me in real life without ghost kids or Dolby sound.

Josh Hutcherson returns as Mike Schmidt, the former security guard of Freddy Fazbear’s Pizza and brother to Piper Rubio‘s Abby Schmidt, the girl who bonded with the children whose spirits were tied to the animatronic characters. Mike is still dealing with the trauma of what happened while building a deeper relationship with Vanessa Shelly, played by Elizabeth Lail, the local police officer who helped Mike and Abby survive the experience, while also being the daughter of William Afton. This serial killer caused everything that happened at Freddy Fazbear’s Pizzeria.

The film begins in a flashback to Vanessa’s childhood and the tragedy of her friend Charlotte (Audrey Lynn Marie) in the original Freddy Fazbear Pizzeria. This place looks part theme park and part Disney World restaurant. Fast Forward to now with Abby missing her ghost friends, Mike having the worst PTSD, Mike and Vanessa issues figuring out what they are to each other we have a new animatronic danger in the Marionette who are controlling similar Freddy Fazbear and friends to get to Abby all the while the story of what happened in the last movie has now become all the rage in their town as the new Fazfest is approaching.

Let’s get past what happened. Is it good? Well, I think just like the first film, you might not be the audience if you’re over thirty-five. I could easily tell how the film was not only staying close to the story of the early games but also replicating some mechanics of them in the story through the characters. I think a lot of that comes from the original game’s creator, Scott Cawthon, coming back to write this one, too. Emma Tammi also returns as director and does well visually, making the film a bit darker than the first. Raising the stakes and adding more complexity to the story while keeping it something that I feel is a good kids’ horror movie. For the adults, having Skeet Ulrich in the film is a fun easter egg since Matthew Lillard plays William Afton, the real big bad of the franchise. Five Nights at Freddy’s 2 is not an amazing movie, but it was entertaining, and the story is interesting enough for me to want to check out another one of these in a few years. Hutcherson is still good as the heroic male/player representative. Rubio is the heart of the film and the movie series. Lail gets to do a lot more and has the best arc in the movie. Parents, be prepared for the off-screen deaths that are a bit more gruesome than you might expect, even if you don’t see them.