Scott Cawthon and Blumhouse return together to bring theatres Five Nights at Freddy’s 2, a fun and surprisingly hilarious film that steps up the horror a little bit. Still, the story itself is unsurprisingly all over the place.
Five Nights at Freddy’s 2 takes place two years after the events of the first film, where we find our main three characters, Abby and Michael Schmidt, trying to resume their lives normally, while Vanessa Afton struggles to deal with the traumatic events of the first film.
After a group of ghost hunters enters the original pizzeria, they unfortunately unleash a spiritual and robotic evil that our main three have to face.
Now, since this review is more in-depth than my non-spoiler review, this will contain spoilers, so please watch Five Nights at Freddy’s 2 before reading this, or if you want to know what you’re getting into, you can read my spoiler-free review here.
SPOILERS AHEAD!!!
Let’s start with what I liked and loved about the film.
The film opens in 1982 at the original Freddy Fazbears pizzeria, where we are introduced to one of FNAF’s saddest and coolest characters (In my opinion), Charlotte.
Charlotte is such a pivotal character in the Five Nights at Freddy’s franchise because she is the reason the ghosts of the kids are active, and the same happens here.
Charlotte is killed by William Afton after saving a boy from being killed and falls through a trapped door on the stage and is brought back up, being held by The Puppet/The marionette.
This death feels much sadder, heartbreaking and devastating, and it is inside the pizzeria, where she tries to warn the adults, but they shrug her off, whereas in the games, she dies outside in the rain, where the puppet couldn’t go because it was programmed to protect her inside the pizzeria.
This change to me, I think, was great because it shows us the motivation Charlotte has later on in the film, and honestly, it is completely justified.
We catch up with our main three protagonists, Michael and Abby Schmidt and Vanessa Afton.
We see a much happier relationship between the Schmidt siblings, and Mike asks Vanessa out on a date after she is awoken by a nightmare.
It feels nice to know where these characters are mentally and physically after the first film, seeing how they interact with the world around them after what happened.
I like that Abby misses the animatronics because it shows that she hasn’t moved on from her connection with them, and due to that connection, it gives us a reason to go back to that setting.
I also love the fact that Vanessa has become the main character of this film.
We see her struggle with the death of her father and being complicit in her father's activities, but we also see her confronting the unresolved trauma that she has due to her witnessing the death of her best friend, Charlotte and being complicit in that as well.
I like the introduction to McKenna Grace (Lisa), Teo Briones (Alex) and David Andrew Calvillo (Rob) characters as the spectral Scoopers, probably a reference to the Scoopers from FNAF: sister location.
They are a group of ghost hunters.
We first see them through Abby watching them on TV, and later they reach the original Freddy Fazbears Pizzeria, where Charlotte was killed.
Through them, we unknowingly meet (well, unknown to general audiences) Michael Afton.
His addition to the cast was very interesting, especially with Vanessa being known as Williams' only child in the first film.
Through this, we see the reveal of the toy animatronics, and just like the first film, they all look amazing; every animatronic looks like it was pulled straight from the games.
The withered core four look amazing, especially Foxy, who looks even more terrifying in live action.
The action with the animatronics was okay to me; they were able to juggle the outdoors action with Vanessa being attacked by Mangle/Toy Foxy, and within the pizzeria, where Mike is literally just playing Five Nights at Freddy’s 2 in real life.
Speaking of the animatronics, the voices for the Toy Animatronics were amazing.
Megan Fox sounded amazing as Toy Chica and gave off a caring tone when talking to Abby.
Kellen Goff sounded absolutely menacing as he had a deeper voice, but since he played Glamrock Freddy in FNAF: Security Breach, all I heard was an evil Glamrock Freddy, which I like.
Now the internet's favourite theorist, MatPat, plays Toy Bonnie, and I was so surprised at how he sounded.
I really wasn’t expecting such a high-pitched voice, but then again, that's how Toy Bonnie sounds in the games.
It was just really cool to hear MatPat not sound like himself.
I think he did an amazing job voicing Toy Bonnie.
The cameos in this film were great. We saw a glimpse of Shadow Bonnie, we saw Circus Baby, Ballora showed up as the ballerina in the music box, and I would like to say there was an appearance of Shadow Freddy, but I need a more HD look at that scene to confirm.
We saw the return of CoryXKenshin as a taxi driver again, Abby bringing a murderous Animatronic in his cab, and we saw the return of a really good lawyer, Doug, who was the lawyer of Aunt Jane in the first film.
Now this is where we go into what I didn’t like about this film, and to start it off was Scott Cawthon’s writing.
Scott Cawthon is credited as the sole writer of this project, and it shows; he hasn’t ever made a straightforward story ever, especially with the games, which is why YouTubers like Matpat blew up because their theories and how they pieced together the story are what made sense.
Scott Cawthon juggles three different storylines in this film, and while the other two are the Schmidt siblings and Vanessa’s trauma, the third feels like he just wanted to push some of the game's lore into the story.
In this film, we get a dream/memory sequence of Vanessa confronting William Afton in her dreams.
There is a specific scene where Vanessa turns into her younger self and runs into her dad's workshop.
When she tries to hide, we see the animatronic Circus Baby from FNAF: Sister Location make a cameo.
I loved this at first, but thinking about it later on, I am confused as to what her purpose was in the film.
Her eyes light up, and we think she will do something, but she doesn’t do anything, and we move on.
Her addition, storywise, felt like fan service to me, and there wasn’t a reason for her to activate or be there; she just felt Vanessa’s presence and said hi, that's all.
Michael Afton’s addition into this story came out of left field for me; there were never any hints to his existence in the first film, and not even William, his own father, shares a single hint about him.
Of course, the explanation is that Vanessa doesn’t share much about her family, which is why she kept any mention of Michael away, which drives a wedge between Mike and Vanessa.
His introduction in the film, I will say, was great, because we see him planting the seeds that eventually allow Charlotte to escape the pizzeria, in doing so, though the animatronics do kill the Spectral Scoopers.
I would’ve loved some more time with the spectral scoopers, especially since the group is played by some well-known actors.
We do get some more time with McKenna Grace, who gets possessed by The Puppet / Charlotte, and here we see that each person who gets possessed by Charlotte looks like a horrifying version of The Puppet, which I loved.
Though by the end of the film, it feels like Cawthon had trouble with juggling the two villains, Michael Afton and Charlotte, as Michael feels more like a side villain who is taking all the credit, while Charlotte does all the heavy lifting.
Another thing I didn’t like was Fazfest.
In this film, the characters are constantly bringing up this festival called Fazfest, and by the end of the film, it’s revealed that Michael Afton wants to use the festival to conduct a massacre to help continue his father's legacy.
Though that’s his mission, Charlotte’s mission is to kill the parents of the town, as she blames them for not helping her and neglecting the children being killed by William Afton.
This is a clash of missions, and it is absolutely confusing to me, because both villains want to use the animatronics for murder, but who is really controlling the animatronics? Is it Michael Afton or is it Charlotte?
Overall, my gripe with this film is genuinely Scott Cawthon’s writing, the forced addition of Michael Afton, the out-of-place cameo of Circus Baby, and the struggle to juggle three different storylines is what frustrated me.
What frustrates me even more is what will happen in Five Nights at Freddy’s 3.
We know that there will be a third installment in this franchise, but the fact that we are entering the third film with possibly three or four different stories being juggled makes me nervous.
Scott Cawthon has shown in the past that he isn’t the greatest writer, but the lore of his stories is what’s great.
If he can find another co-writer with whom he is comfortable working, I think the third film would be even better, because clearly, he had some trouble trying to synchronize all three stories.
In the end, the film is good, the characters are great, the anamitronics look fantastic, but the story and the writing need to be better. It has to be better.