Critics agree: the only thing scary about Five Nights at Freddy’s 2 is how poorly-constructed it is. The Guardian’s Jesse Hassenger says the film can’t even transition between scenes with anything but the lumbering clunkiness of a pizza restaurant robot. The film has a stinky 12% on Rotten Tomatoes, with the vast majority of reviews calling the film boring, confusing, or hack. One outlier, the review at RogerEbert.com, which appreciates the film’s basic pleasures: “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 audience also tells a different story. The Popcornmeter (at time of publication) stands at 88%. Audiences still can’t wait to meet Freddy and his robo-pals.
FNAF2 is set a year after the first film, with ex-security guard Mike (Josh Hutcherson), ex-cop Vanessa (Elizabeth Lail) and ex-10-year-old (she’s 11 now) Abby (Piper Rubio) still dealing with the trauma of their past five nights at a certain pizza place. Vulture’s Bilge Ebiri found the trauma plot especially galling in FNAF2, since that’s what every horror movie is about nowadays. You used to just be able to scare people with the concept of a guy in a hockey mask. Or a big blob. Those days are no more.
“Trauma. They made it all about trauma. Even more than it was the last time. If the first Five Nights at Freddy’s played like a clunky attempt to introduce youngish kids to the cadences of horror, then its sequel plays like a clunky attempt to introduce now slightly olderish kids to the clichés of horror. And so, to the endless list of modern genre films about trauma, we must now add Five Nights at Freddy’s 2. It makes some kind of demented sense: Isn’t the point of these films to imitate all the other scary movies out there?” — Bilge Ebiri, Vulture
“The ghost-possessed family-restaurant animatronics of the Five Nights at Freddy’s movies lumber around with such heavy-footed gaucherie that it’s hard to figure out how they’re physically able to move from place to place as quickly as they’d need to for a proper killing spree. In what could be mistaken for a case of form following function, Five Nights at Freddy’s 2 moves the exact same way. It’s so ostentatiously awkward that it constantly draws attention to its inept imitations of actions that other movies, even bad ones, intuitively understand – like making transitions between scenes or locations.” — Jesse Hassenger, The Guardian
“Original creator Scott Cawthon returns as the sole screenwriter this time around. While there is generally more going on than in the uneventful first movie, the sequel’s writing displays a different kind of incompetence. Cawthon establishes multiple rules and subplots only to later completely disregard them. It feels as though his screenplay was never given any passes before shooting out of laziness, as the sequel to a beloved IP is bound to rake in cash.” — Tyler Taing, Discussing Film
“The sequel is also a disappointment in the horror department. Like the first, it’s rated PG-13, so no one was expecting a gore-fest. That said, the kills were more effective in the first film, as was the tension throughout, over the secret truth about Freddy Fazbear. Tammi showed in the first film that she can pull off effective, entertaining PG-13 horror sequences, but somehow, that just didn’t happen in this movie.” — Chris Hayner Polygon
“The film 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.” — Simon Abrams, RogerEbert.com
