Given the immense appeal of Five Nights at Freddy’s as a brand and how it has managed to wrestle its way into nearly all aisles of every big box store, one would think that the film adaptations of this cash-printing franchise would be able to have at least a twinge of charm. The first movie in the series became a blockbuster hit, ensuring that more sequels would follow. With the arrival of Five Nights at Freddy’s 2 this week, though, what has become clear is that the one-noteness of the series was well-hidden in the video games. The jump-scare-centric titles got by thanks to unique aesthetic changes and a nebulous approach to storytelling, but the movies cannot capture that magic even with the creator of the entire franchise making sure his name appears multiple times in the opening credits.
Five Nights at Freddy’s 2 follows the sequel playbook to a T, applying the ethos of “more of the same, and this time bigger” to its own detriment. There are more jump scares, more animatronics, and more plunges into the franchise’s eccentric lore. Despite the financial success the first movie found, this strategy seemed like the right idea. The big problem is that the foundation of this movie is one built on contrivance and convenience, with a script so poorly constructed that it teeters like a wobbly Jenga tower with even the slightest shift.
The construction of this narrative leads to a horror sequel that is aggravating to watch, as characters exist simply to get to the next scene, and with no overarching ideas about what they want, how they might get them, or what they’ll do once they’ve accomplished their goals. The only real saving grace for the movie is that the actors themselves are doing their best despite limited resources, and the practical effects for the animatronics remain pretty cool, but those are not enough to save Five Nights at Freddy’s 2 from itself.
Rating: 1.5 out of 5
| PROS | CONS |
|---|---|
| Practical effects are solid | Script is awful, making characters unbearable |
| The scares are non-existent | |
| It has no ending |
Five Nights at Freddy’s 2 Goes Deep on Lore, For Better and Worse
Picking up not long after the events of the first movie, Five Nights at Freddy’s 2 has one kernel of a good idea: the lingering trauma of the first film. It sets up an exploration of this theme through Abby (Piper Rubio) missing her haunted animatronic pals, but also how Vanessa (Elizabeth Lail) is still grappling with the reality of her dad’s murderous past. Caught in the middle of it is Mike (Josh Hutcherson), who is just trying to put everything back to normal for everyone. This is almost never the path that horror movie sequels take, so, for a brief time, it seems like Five Nights at Freddy’s 2 is going to flip the script on what fans are expecting. Of course, this leads to the actual plot of the movie, which feeds into the film’s tendency to fall prey to the worst sequel trap: surprise, there was ANOTHER Freddy Fazbear’s location, and it’s haunted by ANOTHER angry ghost.
This is also the point where the troubles for Five Nights at Freddy’s 2 really begin, as the incoherence of the script itself means that almost none of the promise from that initial setup can be fully explored in a meaningful way. Characters are given sporadic sequences before the film cuts to someone else, with the result of almost every moment being the character treading water as they wait for the scene to just end. The biggest issue with this isn’t just that the writing itself leaves a lot to be desired; it means the actors themselves have almost nothing to do.
Hutcherson seems totally lost in the film thanks to the writing, unsure about what he should really be doing at any moment. Lail is at least entertaining, especially in her scarier scenes, but the writing for Vanessa on the whole makes the character baffling. Matthew Lillard is a saving grace, making the most out of what he’s given despite being dead. The downside, of course, is that he’s hardly in the movie. Fans expecting Skeet Ulrich to make an impact in some kind of Scream reunion will come away disappointed, as the actor is only afforded just one scene in which he could have easily been replaced by a book.
Five Nights at Freddy’s 2 Fails in All-New Ways From the First Movie
Like the first movie, there’s a tonal problem where Five Nights at Freddy’s 2 straddles the line between cornball silliness and kid-friendly scariness. There’s a way for these to work in tandem, either for the comedy to disarm an audience so the scares are at least somewhat effective, or for the gags to arrive after a scary moment to ease some of the tension in the room. Most of the time, however, the tones are warring, creating a jarring effect for the audience and preventing any connectivity to the characters because it’s never fully clear what direction the movie is headed in.
To its credit, there is one moment where these two tonal distinctions work in tandem, where the scares and the humor collaborate, and you know what? It’s actually effective. In the scene where the “Toy Chica” animatronic gets her first kill, Five Nights at Freddy’s 2 strikes the right balance of being a little funny, a little hammy, a little scary, and a little violent. The tragedy is that this is one scene in a film that clocks in at over 100 minutes, so you could have a sneezing fit in the theater and miss it.
The most frustrating thing about Five Nights at Freddy’s 2 on the whole is that the film has no ending. It’s not even a spoiler to note this because the movie itself has no character trajectory that can be tracked, meaning its final moments can’t be ruined before the film cuts to black. There is no conclusion to what can be called the story here. Five Nights at Freddy’s 2 just stops. Don’t be fooled, though; despite this unsatisfying wrap-up, the pieces are clearly in place for Five Nights at Freddy’s 3.
Five Nights at Freddy’s 2 Has Almost No Tricks Up Its Sleeve
Lest the impression be given that Five Nights at Freddy’s 2 is a complete bore (rest assured, it mostly is), there are fleeting moments of entertainment to be found, like the scurrying shadow of the Marionette as it moves about. In truth, there are really just two big scenes in the movie that actually work, and both of them call back to the games in major ways. The first is a sequence where Vanessa attempts to confront her dead father in a dream, returning to her childhood home and facing his specter to try and face her fears (fans may find it reminiscent of FNAF4’s setting). It’s one of the few scenes in the film where the direction, as well as the narrative beats and scares, actually make sense for the character’s focus.
The second major sequence that’s actually interesting is when the film calls back to the actual Five Nights at Freddy’s 2 video game, as Mike finds himself confined to a security room with no closeable door and only a Freddy mask disguise at his disposal. It uses the elements of the actual game very well, and even manages to keep the audience on their toes about what might happen next. There’s one problem with this sequence, which could also describe the back half of the film as a whole: the characters are so split up that the editing consistently shifts from one sequence to the other with no flow to the narrative and no logical reasoning behind the change in perspective. It’s a jarring decision, and one that hurts one of the few scenes that’s actually interesting.
Five Nights at Freddy’s 2 seems to think that it knows what its audience wants. If we’re measuring hoots and hollers as an official unit, the screening I attended certainly had plenty of them, which perhaps is a sign that it cleared the low bar set by the first movie for some fans. That said, it’s okay to expect more out of an adaptation, especially something as big as Five Nights at Freddy’s. Simply giving the audience what they’re expecting and winking at a cameo is easy; subverting expectations and trying to push the material into new places would have been challenging, but is avoided at all costs. As a result, anyone hoping for something remotely interesting or even the least bit scary will come away profoundly disappointed.
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Given the immense appeal of Five Nights at Freddy’s as a brand and how it has managed to wrestle its way into nearly all aisles of every big box store, one would think that the film adaptations of this cash-printing franchise would be able to have at least a twinge of charm. The first movie
The post Five Nights at Freddy’s 2 Proves Sometimes Dead Really Is Better (Review) appeared first on ComicBook.com. ComicBook.comRead More