Five Nights at Freddy’s 2

As a longtime horror fan, I am all in on gateway horror. It’s the perfect on-ramp for the next generation of spooky-season addicts. My own gateway movies were Poltergeist, Gremlins, and The Gate—the kind of films that made me fall in love with horror while also making me a little more cautious about the shadows around me. Those movies opened the door, and now I practically live in the genre. Without them, who knows? I could’ve ended up someone who says things like “I don’t really watch horror.” Terrifying thought.

What I’m not here for, though, is bad gateway horror—which brings us to Five Nights at Freddy’s. The first movie was based on a wildly popular game and somehow managed to be more snooze than scare. But hey, it made money, so now we have a sequel that, like its older sibling, still can’t find its way through the dark, even with a map and a flashlight.

After barely surviving the chaos at Freddy Fazbear’s Pizza, Abby (Piper Rubio), Mike (Josh Hutcherson), and Vanessa (Elizabeth Lail) are all trying to return to normal life. Mike’s basically succeeded, Abby misses her creepy new “friends,” and Vanessa is stuck in an endless loop of nightmares. But good news—they took care of the killer animatronics at that one Freddy’s location. So clearly everything is fine, right? …Right?

Of course not. There’s another Freddy Fazbear’s—because of course there is—and it’s the original one. Not only does it have the same nightmare-fuel animatronics, but it also comes with something extra that might be even worse. Abby eventually finds her way there, thinks she’s reconnecting with her pals, and ends up helping them escape. Unfortunately, she doesn’t realize she’s walking right into another disaster, and once again Mike and Vanessa have to suit up and go save her.

Scott Cawthon, who created the game and wrote the film, doesn’t seem all that interested in story this time around. Instead, the movie leans hard on jump scares, like it’s trying to convince you it’s scary by sheer quantity. But the story is muddled, the tension is basically a myth, and the jokes? I laughed more at scenes I’m fairly certain were not intended to be funny. If this is gateway horror, the gate is hanging off its rusty hinges.

And look, I wanted to like this series. Killer animatronic robots from a pizza place? That sounds like the kind of fun chaos I’d buy tickets for twice. But Five Nights at Freddy’s 2 somehow proves that giving a film more money doesn’t guarantee giving it more entertainment. I wasn’t a big fan of the first movie, so I figured the only direction left was up—but Freddy apparently brought a shovel and went lower.

The cast is back, and we even get a mini Scream reunion with Matthew Lillard returning and Skeet Ulrich popping in. But honestly, you could swap the actors and animatronics and I’m not sure anyone would notice—everyone’s operating at about the same energy level.

I get that the games have a massive fanbase, and maybe they’ll enjoy this more than I did. But for the rest of us? There are plenty of better gateway horror options to show your kids—or yourself. Stick with the classics. This ain’t it. And since the third act basically tees up a third movie, I’ll just say this: letting us know another sequel is coming feels less like an announcement and more like a threat.