‘Five Nights At Freddy’s 2’ review: Maniacal mascots remain star attraction of dull horror sequel

Dir: Emma Tammi. US. 2025. 104mins

With Five Nights At Freddy’s 2, Jim Henson’s Creature Shop remains the franchise’s star attraction, the company once again doing impressive work bringing the menacing robotic creatures to life. Unfortunately, this horror sequel is otherwise as inanimate as its predecessor, failing to be sufficiently frightening or dramatic. Once again, Josh Hutcherson does battle with a group of life-size killer animatronics, who this time escape Freddy Fazbear’s Pizza to lay waste to the outside world. But whether trivialising childhood trauma or delivering nonsensical plot twists, Freddy’s 2 feels like a rushed attempt to capitalise on the original film’s surprise success.

Never breaks free of its own conventionality

Universal launches this Blumhouse production globally on December 5, catering to an underserved horror audience seeking scares. Like the 2023 film, which was based on the popular video games series and brought in $292 million worldwide, Freddy’s 2 avoids excessive gore or swearing, allowing for a wider viewership. The follow-up may not be able to match the first picture’s commercial performance but, considering that Five Nights At Freddy’s simultaneously streamed on Peacock, Freddy’s 2 could benefit from a more exclusive theatrical window. Regardless, the new film sets the stage for an inevitable Freddy’s 3, and profitability seems assured for this modestly-budgeted picture.

Hutcherson returns as Mike, who takes care of his 11-year-old sister Abby (Piper Rubio), keeping from her the dark secrets of the animatronic mascots she befriended in the first film. Meanwhile, his potential love interest Vanessa (Elizabeth Lail) is on leave from the police force after reckoning with the fact that her serial-killer father William (Matthew Lillard) murdered the children whose spirits now reside in those creepy creatures. But Mike and Vanessa will have to confront their fears once Abby is summoned by the animatronics — and a second abandoned Freddy Fazbear’s Pizza restaurant starts to house strange occurrences.

Returning director Emma Tammi reunites with writer Scott Cawthon, who created the video game, for this new instalment, which is slightly scarier than the original. That said, the filmmakers again spend too much time on tiresome jump scares, which they apparently believe they must use in place of graphic violence or gruesome bloodshed. That lack of innovative thinking is felt throughout Freddy’s 2, which vainly tries to deepen our understanding of its central characters. But the horror Mike and Vanessa have experienced leads to precious few new developments, and their tentative attempts at a relationship fail to produce romantic sparks.

The original film benefited from its clever incorporation of the animatronics, which recalled the unsettlingly cheery robotic figures designed to entertain children at cheesy US pizza chains such as Chuck E. Cheese. Jim Henson’s Creature Shop emphasised what was always so petrifying about these lumbering metal mascots, and the inhuman robot animals are equally unnerving in Freddy’s 2. At its best, the sequel has fun with the creatures’ lifeless eyes and wicked expressions although, because they move so slowly, any real tension comes from their human prey conveniently falling down when they’re trying to escape.

Freddy’s 2 gets some mileage out of the reveal of a new terror, known as The Marionette, which can invade the body of its victims, leading to some of the film’s most disturbing scenes. But what eventually becomes clear is that this villain’s brief introduction is mostly intended to tease its presumably larger role in the next chapter, making the narrative feel even more underwhelming.

The performances, which are meant to convey the emotional fallout from Five Nights At Freddy’s, suffer from a script that favours awkwardly on-the-nose dialogue. Even worse, Freddy’s 2 asks its characters to behave foolishly in order to further the plot. Abby manages to elude Mike’s supervision surprisingly easily to find her animatronic friends, while Vanessa decides not to tell Mike important information that will later come to light at the most perfectly inopportune moment. Hutcherson’s superficial brooding and Lail’s one-note despair cannot begin to embody the grief and guilt these troubled characters are supposed to be riddled with.

The first film confined the murderous animatronics to the restaurant but in Freddy’s 2 they escape their digital shackles, creating the potential for funny and frightening encounters with everyday people. But Tammi and Cawthon never successfully exploit the scenario, conjuring up only dull horror sequences and uninspired comedic bits. The killer mascots may spring the coop, but this sequel never breaks free of its own conventionality.