Five Nights At Freddy's 2 (15)

Mike Schmidt, former night-time security guard at the abandoned Freddy Fazbear's Pizza entertainment centre, has managed to protect his younger sister Abby from the truth about what happened to animatronic menaces Freddie, Bonnie, Chica and Foxie. When the girl sneaks out to reunite with her pals, Mike returns to the scene with police officer Vanessa to face the nightmare once more and expose dark secrets about Freddy's origins.

LondonNet Film Review

Five Nights At Freddy’s 2 (15) Film Review from LondonNet

Based on a series of ghoulish video games created by Scott Cawthon, Emma Tammi’s soporific sequel about animatronic animals possessed by the ghosts of murdered children spends too much time distilling plot in characters’ clunky dialogue and neglects the most basic requirement of a horror movie: scare the audience – or at the very least unsettle us…

Mike Schmidt (Josh Hutcherson), former night-time security guard at the abandoned Freddy Fazbear’s Pizza entertainment centre, has managed to protect his younger sister Abby (Piper Rubio) from the truth about what happened to Freddy, Bonnie the bunny, Chica the chicken and Foxy the pirate fox. Or so he thinks. He has lied to Abby and told her the animatronics no longer function properly and he will fix them in the future. For now, she must concentrate on making flesh and blood friends at school. Abby tries but science teacher Mr Berg (Wayne Knight) appears determined to scupper her plan to enter the forthcoming school science fair.

A macabre marionette possessed by the spectre of another slain child, Charlotte, breaks free and lures Abby back to Freddy Fazbear’s under the auspices of reuniting the lonely girl with her beloved mechanised chums. When Mike discovers his little sister is missing, he races to the scene and crosses paths once more with police officer Vanessa (Elizabeth Lail), whose unhinged father was serial killer William Afton (Matthew Lillard), the man responsible for murdering Charlotte and snuffing out other innocent lives.

Five Nights At Freddy’s 2 opens with a teasing voiceover: “Don’t forget to stay to the end for a great big surprise”. An additional scene in the end credits confirms more instalments will be forthcoming. One more night at Freddy’s, let alone five, would be purgatory. Storytelling gears grind painfully when it makes no sense to create friction: two characters tumble into shallow water and stay there when it is evident there is something nasty lurking beneath the rippling surface, and Mike needlessly shuts down an important conversation that warns him of impending doom so he can be crudely excused from intervening.

The mechanical menaces fashioned by Jim Henson’s Creature Shop are the star attractions but they play a much smaller role in spilling blood. A protracted battle with one nefarious robot perched atop a moving vehicle leaves logic in the rear-view mirror. Hutcherson is squandered in a thankless lead role that strands him in front of a computer screen, clicking a mouse for the centrepiece action sequence. Cawthon’s script offers no tasty morsels to chew on besides a brief appearance by Scream star Skeet Ulrich as Charlotte’s embittered father. I feel his pain.

– Sarah Lee