Five Nights At Freddy’s 2 Review
By Kevin Hoskinson
Entertainment Editor
One of the things the past couple of years has shown us is that video game adaptations can actually be decent to great when there is heart put into it. The Last of Us came out swinging on HBO, and The Super Mario Bros. Movie was a massive success with both fans and general audiences alike a couple of years ago. The same year Super Mario was released, we got Five Nights at Freddy’s, another film based on a video game series. It was a box-office success, and while critics weren’t kind to it, fans of the game and general audiences had a blast with it, myself included. It was a great gateway horror film, allowing young teens and their families to enjoy the chaos together. It was a hit for Blumhouse and Universal, and a sequel was inevitable.
A couple of years have passed, and now we have Five Nights at Freddy’s 2, a film that is both frustrating and successful in its own way. Picking up a year after the events of the first movie, it follows the characters as they do battle once again with sadistic animatronics come to life. There is also a science fair that Abby is desperate to be part of, and the town is putting on its first Fazfest. The location in the first film is a franchise, and the original location is much more deadly and dangerous. Mike is trying to improve his social life by “dating” Vanessa while she struggles with the demons of being William Afton’s daughter, Matthew Lillard’s character from the first film. Wayne Knight shows up as Abby’s science teacher, and he reminds us that he’s the jerk in Jurassic Park, also. There’s also Toy Chica, who is voiced by Megan Fox. And Skeet Ulrich is in it too, sharing the screen with his co-star Matthew Lillard for the first time since Scream, which doesn’t matter much to this film at all.
If that paragraph felt like a chore to read, imagine watching the film. There is a lot going on, and it’s a wild ride and not in a good way. People I normally like (cough… Josh Hutcherson… cough) are giving some of the worst performances of their careers, and possibly of the entire year. The story is disjointed and doesn’t give you a solid jumping-off point, effectively leaving you confused at character choices and basic story points. It was evident that a Fazfest was happening, but it was unclear whether we should care about it at all. There is a puppet at the original location named Marionette that is possessing people (?). I think. I’m not sure. I know it likes McKenna Grace’s character who plays an amateur ghost hunter. Not to mention, one of the movie’s biggest plot points is never resolved. It’s supposed to be a wink to the camera and them hinting at a sequel, but it’s just lazy. It’s almost as if they didn’t know how to end that particular thing and were like, “You know, we can finish this later. Let’s just give them shiny new animatronics and they won’t care”. Listen, I’m not a fan of the franchise, so I don’t particularly care, but my teenage kids certainly did. They grew up with Five Nights at Freddy’s and were disappointed by this ending, although they thought the movie was solid overall.
I have a headache thinking about it. The first film was at least entertaining. This film is disappointing in so many ways. It’s lazy and generic as heck. I understand it may not be for me; the kids in my theater seemed to enjoy it, but it’s not fun for the rest of us. FNAF is a cultural phenomenon, and it deserves so much better than this. Do better Universal and Blumhouse.
Rating: 1 Pastrami Nation out of 5.
