“Five Nights at Freddy’s 2,” with a flashback set in a “Chuck E. Cheese”-style pizzeria in 1982, immediately distinguishes this high-toned sequel from the underwhelming 2023 video game adaptation. This opening sequence notably focuses on one character, Charlotte (Audrey Lynn-Marie), as she chases a pint-sized partygoer and his robot-animal kidnapper. The new movie’s establishing scene not only builds on the first movie’s conceptually rich setup, but also highlights the disorienting contrast between the pizzeria’s brightly colored main eating area and its dimly lit backroom corridors.
“Five Nights at Freddy’s 2” not only has a more involved story, but also features more engaged filmmaking throughout, with more camera setups and visual brio. It also resembles an honest-to-goodness video game adaptation, since its melodramatic lore and formulaic, yet detailed, plot evoke video game mechanics, especially the protagonists’ well-foregrounded use of analog technology like PC maps and passwords, walkie-talkies, and headphones. They used to make unpretentious sequels like this all the time in the 1980s. Now this feels like the best kind of throwback, an Amblin/Spielberg-esque horror-adventure that’s thoughtful and smart enough to warrant your attention.
The film mainly follows three survivors of the traumatic events from the last movie. Somehow, each of them has sensible motives and even a handful of character-focused dialogue scenes. There’s Abby (Piper Rubio), a lonely 11-year-old robotics enthusiast who can’t stop thinking about her “friends,” the spooky animal robots that she ran into last time she visited the abandoned Freddy Fazbear’s Pizza.
Being a creative and pure-at-heart youth, Abby sees things that her brother Mike (Josh Hutcherson) has missed, partly because he wants to forget everything about Freddy and his unsettling pals. Mike also wants to “fix” both his family and Vanessa (Elizabeth Lail), a contrite, shell-shocked survivor of the last movie’s climactic pizzeria massacre and the daughter of the animatronics’ murderous designer, William Afton (Matthew Lillard).
As you might guess, Freddy and his friends return, and this time it’s thanks to a group of hapless ghost-hunters, who accidentally unleash a literal ghost in the original Freddy Fazbear’s Pizza location. Charlotte’s spirit has merged with a unique animatronic called the Marionette, and she now has control of a new, more polished batch of robots. Abby helps her friends to escape, of course, leaving it up to Mike and Vanessa to prevent further automated shenanigans. They’re only so successful, though not for want of trying.
Director Emma Tammi (“The Wind”) and screenwriter/original video game series creator Scott Cawthon didn’t reinvent the wheel with this sequel. Still, they seemed to pay closer attention not only to what worked but also to what needed further development after their first movie’s box-office success. That extra effort shows in the robots’ newly accentuated features and mannerisms, as well as in their human counterparts’ well-articulated concerns for one another.
It’s especially refreshing to see Vanessa call out Mike’s misplaced concern when he tells her that “I want to fix you”; that line makes sense for Mike, and so does Vanessa’s response. Abby’s story also benefits from a credible desire to act on instinct first and then later talk about her feelings. Extra value is added by veteran character actors like Lillard, who shows up for a scare scene flashback, and Wayne Knight, who plays Abby’s petty and discouraging robotics teacher, Mr. Berg.
This expansive follow-up also thankfully devotes more time to exploring the original Freddy Fazbear’s pizzeria, including an “It’s a Small World”-type water ride, a ball pit, and a performance stage with an oversized trapdoor. Even the new characters add something to the movie’s already compelling haunted throwback look: the Marionette character, with its pupil-less flashbulb eyes and tentacle-stalk arms, resembles a Creepypasta urban legend, and the new robot models, which Jim Henson’s Workshop designed, look like collectible toys that were cast from the same mold as the “Heartbeeps” robots. I wish I could show this movie to my nephew.
Tammi and Cawthon’s attention to what was already appealing about Cawthon’s games pays off in a lot of incidentally pleasurable ways, like whenever you hear the robot’s heavy tread foregrounded on the movie’s soundtrack or see their automated eyebrows flex or hear their lifeless voices crackle with suggestive automated tics and twitches. You might not care about these robots as a fetish-ready expression of poisoned nostalgia, but you’re made of sterner stuff if you can listen to and remain unfazed by an eerie Speak & Spell toy when it tells Abby to “come find us,” and adds: “I’ll show you the way.” For once, you should listen to that mysterious pop culture artefact, it’s got energy and kid-friendly menace to spare.
