‘Five Nights At Freddy’s 2’ review: sauceless horror sequel is somehow worse than the original

More than once in Five Nights At Freddy’s 2, the animatronic horrors that stalk Freddy Fazbear’s Pizza restaurant ponder the question: “I’ve always wondered what exactly goes on in your head.” Judging by this lame sequel (to an almost-as-lame original 2023 movie), the answer should be, “Well, absolutely nothing.” Lacking originality, scares or laughs, this follow-up is a dismal, dried-up horror, with only a few special effects to enliven it.

• READ MORE: ‘Five Nights At Freddy’s’ review: pizza parlour horror doesn’t deliver

Of course, the fact that the first movie was poor mattered not a jot to the online fan community built around the source material: the Scott Cawthon-developed horror video game that first arrived in 2014. They came out in their droves, as Five Nights At Freddy’s grossed $291 million at the global box office. Scripted by Cawthon and directed by Emma Tammi, the same team reunites for the sequel that does little to further the lore around these mechanical killers.

Set one year on from the original movie – in the very early 2000s – a cult has built up around events at Freddy Fazbear’s Pizza which saw four animatronic animals – Freddy (a bear), Chica (a chicken), Foxy (a fox) and Bonnie (a rabbit) cause bloody mayhem. The townsfolk celebrate FazFest with flyers declaring “Freddy’s…is murder” and there are even trips to the abandoned pizza parlour, as kids with video cameras play paranormal activity hunters.

It’s not as much as a celebration for Freddy’s former security guard Mike Schmidt (Josh Hutcherson) or his young sister Abby (Piper Rubio), who is desperate to convince the other kids at school that, yes, it was all real. Vanessa (Elizabeth Lail), the local police officer/love interest, is also back and remains haunted by thoughts of her late father – the serial killer William Afton, whose murders first kickstarted these robotic terrors. Inevitably, Freddy and the gang soon break free.

At least Five Nights At Freddy’s 2 parties like its 1999 with some retro casting. Matthew Lillard is back (in flashback) as Afton. His fellow Scream star Skeet Ulrich also pops up. And best of all, Wayne Knight – the computer nerd from Jurassic Park and Newman from Seinfeld – plays Mr. Berg, who is desperate for the school to win the Science Fair for the third year in a row, but seemingly has it in for Abby. There’s even a dash of The Bucketheads’ 1990s banger ‘The Bomb’ [These Sounds Fall Into My Mind]’ on the soundtrack.

Mr. Berg gets a satisfying enough arc, concluding with arguably the best moment of the film, and there’s a neat nightmare that Vanessa endures involving her father, and – to use a football commentator term – a corridor of uncertainty. But these crumbs aside, there’s very little else here to sustain you through a limp 104 minutes. Despite the odd flash of gore (this is a ‘15’ certificate, so expect minimal scares), the film’s biggest crime is that it’s utterly boring. More uninspiring than a supermarket Margherita pizza, it’s one of the poorest movies of 2025.