“Five Nights at Freddy’s 2” (2025) picks up roughly where the original film (2023) left off, following a healing Mike Schmidt (Josh Hutcherson), a broken Vanessa Afton (Elizabeth Lail) and Mike’s illusioned sister Abby (Piper Rubio). However, the sequel takes each part of what made the first movie moderately enjoyable into very different directions–most usually for the worse. While the film has plenty of merits, it’s nowhere near as coherent nor suitable for new audiences than its predecessor.

My expectations were quite high at the beginning of the film. The opening scene was definitely the high point of the movie, and perhaps even the film franchise thus far–while still whitewashed of on-screen violence to maintain a PG-13 rating for young audiences, the death of Charlotte (Audrey Lynn-Marie) had the most aggressive and cinematic imagery that the FNAF films had attempted yet. This proved to be a continued pattern and perhaps the only strong suit of the rest of the film–the much larger cast of animatronics in the sequel gets much more time to shine. The countless acts of violence committed by and unto these haunted machines are certainly more inventive and frequent, and get increasingly memorable as the film goes on. However, it’s all downhill from there. Compared to the first film, the animatronics’ hostile behavior is much less suspenseful and chilling, seeming to be more of an attempt to create exciting slasher action for an audience too young to receive it in its highest quality. Only Toy Chica, who is played by Megan Fox (unfortunately, you read that correctly) gets more than a faint sprinkling of screen time–there are roughly four lines between Toy Freddy (Kellen Goff) and Toy Bonnie (Matthew Patrick) and a few seconds on screen for each of the other six. It feels as if series creator Scott Cawthon commissioned all of the props before he even wrote the script, far from the engaging, three-steps-ahead lore-crafting fans have come to know from him.

Speaking of the script and its plot, the story development is perhaps the most contentious part of the film. Roughly half of the movie is spent depicting emotional struggles between the three titular characters, yet remarkably little development actually takes place here. While, yes, Mike’s character arc was satisfied by the first film, he returns to being flat and stubborn while Abby and Vanessa don’t change much. This is no problem, however, compared to their adversaries. “FNAF 2”’s main villains are nothing short of terrible, which is painful to say for a multimedia empire built on its wildly intriguing antagonists. In total, they receive just about as much screen time as Abby’s annoying science teacher (Wayne Knight). Without getting into spoiler-ridden details, the killers’ motivations are absurd at best, and their motives make no sense, fluctuating wildly to service newer and more predictable challenges for Mike to face.

The sequel’s attempt at having a narrative anywhere near as cohesive as the first resembles the animatronics it was written for. It has the simple plot mechanics to move the film from start to finish and enough bells and whistles so that the viewer isn’t actively off put. However, walking out of the theater, there is no question that the story and acting was phoned in while individual scenes meant to hype up the audience received all of the care and attention from the director (Emma Tammi). 

All of that given, is the movie worth seeing? It depends who you are. While “FNAF 1” focused on slowly providing suspense and world building for new and old audiences alike, the sequel is undeniably structured to cater towards long-time franchise fans. Being loaded with references ranging from subtle sentence choices to integral plot mechanics, “Five Nights at Freddy’s 2” requires an in-depth understanding of the franchise canon to get the full experience. For viewers who fall into this demographic, the film will certainly be enjoyable and likely merit a re-watch before it leaves the theaters. Without this context, the film will fit right in with other modern, mediocre slasher movies with its unengaging characters, barebones narrative and confusing plot devices.