Crew
Director – Emma Tammi, Screenplay – Scott Cawthon, Based on the Five Night’s at Freddy’s Videogames Created by Scott Cawthon, Producers – Jason Blum & Scott Cawthon, Photography – Lyn Moncrief, Music – The Newton Brothers, Visual Effects – Folks VFX (Supervisor – J.V. Pike), Special Effects Supervisor – Donnie Dean, Walkaround Suits & Puppets – Jim Henson’s Creature Shop (Creative Supervisor – Pete Brooke), Production Design – Marc Fisichella. Production Company – Universal/Blumhouse/Scott Cawthon Productions/Mind Hive Films.
Cast
Josh Hutcherson (Mike Schmidt), Elizabeth Lail (Vanessa Shelly), Piper Rubio (Abby Schmidt), Wayne Knight (Mr. Berg), McKenna Grace (Lisa), Freddy Carter (Michael Afton), Theodus Crane (Jeremiah), Skeet Ulrich (Henry), Matthew Lillard (William Afton/Yellow Rabbit), Audrey Lynn Marie (Charlotte), Miriam Spumpkin (Young Vanessa), Coryxkenshin (Cabbie)
Plot
It is 2002, after Mike Schmidt faced the animatronics at the disused Freddy Fazbear’s pizza parlour. He is now cautiously trying to date Vanessa. His younger sister Abby misses the animatronic friends she made at Freddy’s. Mike keeps making promises he will repair them but is unable to tell her that he cannot bring them back to life. The lonely Abby sneaks away to Freddy’s where the animatronics prey on her young mind to get her to remove the protocols that keep them imprisoned on the premises and will allow them free to create havoc in the outside world.
Five Nights at Freddy’s (2023) was a film adapted from the videogame Five Nights at Freddy’s (2014) created by Scott Cawthon. In the videogame, the player is a security guard at a pizzeria who has to face deadly animatronic toys come to life. The game has been a considerable success and created follows-ups and spinoffs. The film version was a huge success for Blumhouse, earning $291 million worldwide – indeed, it was the studio’s biggest box-office hit to date. As is inevitable with Blumhouse, such success was invariably followed by a sequel. This comes about Five Night’s at Freddy’s 2, which reunites director Emma Tammi, star Josh Hutcherson and the key personnel from the first film. This time the script for the sequel is from the videogame’s creator Scott Cawthon.
My attention was piqued when I saw Five Night’s at Freddy’s 2 on some critics’ Worst Films of 2025 list. A quick look around the web shows that the film received some terrible reviews – only sixteen percent of some 120 reviews on Rotten Tomatoes are positive, for instance. On the other hand, I did make me suspect that a good number of these reviewers are not gamers. (I’m not either but do make a point of researching the background on a game). There were assorted comments about the film being confusing because it was overloaded with game canon references, which made me wonder if the critics were doing kneejerk reactions and copying each other just to have something to say rather than had actually thought about anything they wrote. There are a few new animatronics, a new character introduced in backstory. Otherwise, the film has an incredibly simplistic screenplay written so that even under tens can get it – how someone can be confused by that baffles me.
Five Night’s at Freddy’s 2 offers up essentially the same as before with minimal difference. There is a small amount of backstory introduced with the new character of Charlotte. There are more issues with Mike and Vanessa that necessitate a return to Freddy Fazbear’s – not one but two restaurants this time. The film throws in a team of paranormal investigators from the Spectral Scoopers ghostbusters tv show at one point, but they are written out fairly soon in. Wayne Knight has an obnoxious turn as Piper Rubio’s school teacher.
Five Night’s at Freddy’s wasn’t a particularly good film but it had a basic concept – Josh Hutcherson vs the killer animatronics – that worked for it. The same mix has been watered down here. The plot is spread out between different characters – Abby coming under the influence of the animatronics, both Mike and Vanessa conducting independent investigations and a brief interlude with the Spectral Scoopers. The plot is constantly jumping between these strands meaning there is not the cleanness of the first film or the game’s premise of a security guard fighting off killer animatronics.
In fact, Five Night’s at Freddy’s 2 gives us very little of the animatronics within the first hour apart from the odd flashback or dream scene and instead focuses on the barely interesting side plots. We get assorted attacks on other people in different locations – Wayne Knight’s teacher, a couple of random families. (And even then, the content has been watered down – the scene where Wayne Knight has his head squished rather remarkably manages to come out without a drop of blood and seems to cry out for something more R rated). We barely get any scenes with people fighting animatronics. Indeed, Josh Hutcherson’s hero is largely confined to doing nothing more than tapping at a keyboard and wielding a music box during the climactic scenes, which feels a major comedown from the first film.
Trailer here