Sigh, Five Nights at Freddy’s 2 Is Also About Trauma

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The new Five Nights at Freddy’s movie heavily focuses on trauma, even more so than the first one. While the original felt like a somewhat awkward introduction to horror for younger audiences, this sequel seems geared towards slightly older kids, relying on familiar horror tropes. It fits the current trend of horror films exploring trauma, and honestly, it makes sense – isn’t the goal of these movies to mimic other scary films?

The Five Nights at Freddy’s movies, adapted from the popular video game series, are tricky to get right. They can’t be overly violent or silly, but they also need to avoid being too lighthearted. Their serious tone is actually a key part of what appeals to audiences. While the premise – haunted animatronic animals in an abandoned pizza place – sounds outlandish, these films aim for a genuinely dark and unsettling atmosphere.

The story begins with a disturbing murder in 1982: a young girl is stabbed at the very first, and much grander, Freddy Fazbear’s Pizza location. Then, the film jumps ahead twenty years, reconnecting us with characters from the previous movie. We follow young Abby Schmidt (Piper Rubio) and her older brother, Mike (Josh Hutcherson), as they continue to grapple with the terrifying experiences they had before. Vanessa Shelly (Elizabeth Lail) is haunted by visions of her deceased, murderous father, William Afton (Matthew Lillard), while Abby still longs to revisit her animatronic friends—who are possessed by the spirits of the children William Afton killed.

The film initially presents a compellingly bleak world of deserted pizza places, haunted houses, and constant darkness, but it doesn’t fully deliver on that promise. While director Emma Tammi maintains a suitably grim tone, the atmosphere feels lacking. The settings, like the abandoned pizza parlors, aren’t used for creative exploration; they simply serve as dark backdrops for scares that aren’t particularly frightening. (The film introduces a genuinely creepy villain called the Marionette – a tall, unsettling puppet with a balloon-like face.) However, the movie’s exploration of trauma feels superficial. Even a potentially powerful idea – a child connecting with large, strange, robot-like creatures, reminiscent of the classic Frankenstein – doesn’t really go anywhere. It’s presented as something that just happens without deeper meaning or impact.

While Five Nights at Freddy’s 2 is a small step up from the first movie – which felt too safe and lacked energy – it’s also more muddled. The film introduces new rules for how things work in this world, but its storyline feels forced and awkward. Even potentially interesting ideas don’t quite land. For example, the movie centers around a robotics-obsessed girl named Abby and a school science fair, leading you to hope for a fun, chaotic scene reminiscent of Poltergeist or a Joe Dante film. Unfortunately, this promising setup is handled in a surprisingly dull way.

The original Five Nights at Freddy’s was incredibly popular, and this new movie could be a success as well. I saw it at my local theater surrounded by young fans of the game, and I was actually touched – not by the movie itself, but by how much the audience was enjoying it. They clearly knew and loved these characters, reacting with cheers and laughter to moments I didn’t quite understand. Seeing them have fun was genuinely heartwarming, but it also made me wish the movie was better and worthy of their enthusiasm.

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2025-12-05 20:54