Review: ‘Five Nights at Freddy’s 2,’ starring Josh Hutcherson, Piper Rubio, Elizabeth Lail, Freddy Carter, Theodus Crane, Wayne Knight, Mckenna Grace and Skeet Ulrich

December 4, 2025

by Carla Hay

“Five Nights at Freddy’s 2”

Directed by Emma Tammi

Culture Representation: Taking place in 2002 (with a brief flashback to 1982), in the fictional an unnamed city in Minnesota, the horror film “Five Nights at Freddy’s 2” (a sequel to 2023’s “Five Nights at Freddy’s” and based on the “Five Nights at Freddy’s” video game franchise) features a predominantly white cast of characters (with a few African Americans, Asians and Latin people) representing the working-class and middle-class.

Culture Clash: A man and his 11-year-old sister are pulled back into the horror antics of killer animatronic robots from a defunct family entertainment restaurant called Freddy Fazbear’s Pizza. 

Culture Audience: “Five Nights at Freddy’s 2” will appeal primarily to people who are fans of the “Five Nights at Freddy’s” franchise, the movie’s headliners, and poorly made, repetitive horror movies that have no surprises.

The lackluster and sloppily made horror flick “Five Nights at Freddy’s 2” only manages to confirm two truths in movies: (1) Most sequels are inferior to the original. (2) Most video game adaptations are terrible. “Five Nights at Freddy’s 2” is just a boring and more incoherent rehash of 2023’s “Five Nights at Freddy’s,” which was one of the worst horror movies released by a major studio that year.

“Five Nights at Freddy’s” was directed by Emma Tammi and written by Tami, Scott Cawthon (who created the “Five Nights at Freddy’s” video game series) and Seth Cuddeback. For “Five Nights at Freddy’s 2,” Tammi returns as director, but the screenplay was only written by Cawthon. This is clearly not a case where the creator of a video game can blame other screenwriters for making awful movie versions of the video game.

Is it necessary to see or know what happened in the first “Five Nights at Freddy’s” movie before seeing “Five Nights at Freddy’s 2”? Yes. “Five Nights at Freddy’s 2” has several references to spoiler information that was in the first “Five Nights at Freddy’s” movie. The plot of “Five Nights at Freddy’s 2” is already messy. Anyone who doesn’t know what happened in the first “Five Nights at Freddy’s” movie will be even more confused when watching “Five Nights at Freddy 2.”

“Five Nights at Freddy’s 2” (which takes place in an unnamed city in Minnesota) begins by showing a killing that took place in 1982, at a family entertainment restaurant called Freddy Fazbear’s Pizza, which is part of a chain of Freddy Fazbear’s Pizza entertainment restaurants that are similar to the real-life Chuck E. Cheese restaurant chain. (“Five Nights at Freddy’s 2” was actually filmed in Louisiana.) Freddy Fazbear’s Pizza has human-sized animatronic figures of animals, including the company mascot: a bear named Freddy Fazbear.

A girl named Charlotte (played by Audrey Lynn Marie), who’s about 11 or 12 years old, is sitting cross-legged near a trap door in the middle of a stage. Charlotte’s best friend Vanessa (played by Miriam Spumpkin) tries to coax Charlotte away from the trap door and invites Charlotte to sit with Vanessa and her friends. Vanessa tells Charlotte that Charlotte shouldn’t think that Charlotte’s deceased mother is “down there,” as in underneath the trap door. Charlotte seems sad and oblivious to what Vanessa is saying.

Charlotte continues to sit by herself when she sees a boy, who’s about 7 or 8 years old (played Logan Horwitz), being lured outside by someone dressed as a yellow rabbit. Charlotte frantically tells several adults what she just witnessed, but they are dismissive of her. Charlotte decides to take matters into her own hands and try to find the boy herself. She sees the yellow rabbit figure in the restaurant’s kitchen, with his back turned while he is using the sink. The boy is unconscious on the floor.

As Charlotte is carrying the boy out of the kitchen, the Freddy figure sees her, chases after her, and then stabs her. Charlotte staggers wounded onto the stage while the rescued boy runs back to his mother. Charlotte falls into the trap door and is next seen when a human-sized marionette figure (whose face somewhat resembles Billy the Puppet from the “Saw” movies) emerges from the trap door and is carrying Charlotte’s dead body. All the people in the room just stare in silence. It looks as phony and unconvincing as it sounds. The Marionette monster becomes one of the serial killers in “Five Nights at Freddy’s 2.”

“Five Nights at Freddy’s 2” then fast-forwards 20 years later, to 2002. Vanessa has grown up to be a local police officer named Vanessa Shelly (played by Elizabeth Lail), who has recovered from the injuries that she received in the first “Five Nights at Freddy’s” movie, which took place in the year 2000. As already revealed in the first “Five Nights at Freddy’s” movie, Vanessa is the daughter of William Afton (played by Matthew Lillard), a serial killer of children in the 1980s. William would lure his victims from Freddy Fazbear’s Pizza while he was dressed as a character named Yellow Rabbit. (It’s the same murderer who killed Charlotte.) William appears in a few hallucinations and in a brief dream sequence in “Five Nights at Freddy’s 2.”

In the first “Five Nights at Freddy’s” movie, the souls of William’s victims haunted the killer animatronic toys at Freddy Fazbear’s Pizza, which shut down back in the early 1980s, when kids started disappearing from there. A financially struggling young man named Mike Schmidt (played by Josh Hutcherson) took a job as a security guard at the shuttered and abandoned Freddy Fazbear’s Pizza. Mike’s parents are deceased, so he is the guardian of his younger sister Abby Schmidt (played by Piper Rubio), who was 9 years old in the first “Five Nights at Freddy’s” movie. Mike and Abby discovered the secrets of the animatronic toys that came to life.

Abby grew emotionally attached to the animatronic toys that included Freddy (voiced by Kellen Goff), who makes his return in “Five Nights at Freddy’s 2.” “Five Nights at Freddy’s 2″ has also has these animatronic toys that go on a murderous rampage with Freddy and The Marionette: yellow chicken Chica (voiced by Megan Fox); red pirate fox Foxy (also voiced by Goff); and blue rabbit Bonnie (voiced by Matthew Patrick). In Five Nights at Freddy’s 2,” Abby (who is now 11 years old) misses interacting with her animatronic “friends,” so she secretly attempts to revive them.

And what a coincidence: Abby (who is a student at East Lake Middle School) is learning robotics in her science class, which has a mean-spirited teacher named Mr. Berg (played by Wayne Knight), whose fate in the movie can easily be predicted. A lot of kids in the community want to go to a Fazfest event that is a morbid tribute to the animatronic toys from Freddy Fazbear’s Pizza. Mr. Berg has strictly forbidden his students from going to Fazfest, which is taking place at the same time as the East Lake Middle School science fair that Mr. Berg is requiring the students to attend. For the past three years, Mr. Berg has been the teacher of the class that wins the science fair’s competition, and he wants to win again this year.

Meanwhile, three teenagers who have a TV show called “Spectral Scoopers” (for paranormal investigations) have gone to the original Freddy Fazbear’s Pizza location (which is still run-down and abandoned) to film what they find there. The three teenagers are Lisa (played by Mckenna Grace), Rob (played by David Andrew Calvillo) and Alex (played by Teo Briones), who seem to be the only people working on this low-budget show, which is mostly likely on a public-access channel. Alex is the camera operator and Lisa and Rob are the hosts. The three teens (who are mostly generic characters) are taken to this location by a creepy guy named Michael (played by Freddy Carter), who is obviously up to no good. Michael has a secret that is eventually revealed toward the end of the movie.

“Five Nights at Freddy’s 2” has a flimsy story with many plot holes, basically showing that the murderous animatronic toys are looking for new souls to inhabit them. Therefore, the movie is just a bunch of chase scenes with some people getting killed or having their souls stolen by the serial killer toys. The movie’s visual effects aren’t very impressive. And the scares are very limp, cliché and uninteresting.

Supporting characters in “Five Nights at Freddy’s 2” include Mike’s loyal friend Jeremiah (played by Theodus Crane) and engineer Henry Emily (played by Skeet Ulrich), whose daughter Charlotte was shown murdered in the beginning of the movie. All of the movie’s cast members give mediocre performances, with Rubio making the most effort to have a relatable character. “Five Nights at Freddy’s 2” (which has a mid-credits scene that hints at an inevitable sequel) is the epitome of a lazy “cash grab” movie whose only creative accomplishment is making “Five Nights at Freddy” one of the most boring and most idiotic horror movie franchises of all time.

Universal Pictures will release “Five Nights at Freddy’s 2” in U.S. cinemas on December 5, 2025.