“The Empire Strikes Back.” “Terminator 2: Judgment Day.” “The Godfather Part II.” “Aliens.”
Suffice it to say that “Five Nights at Freddy’s 2” won’t join the ranks of Hollywood’s best sequels.
The horror film has one thing in its favor. The first “Freddy’s” wasn’t very good, leveraging its source material and animatronic beasts to juice its box office fortunes.
By comparison, “Freddy’s 2” can’t get much right, from its bland characters to nonexistent frights. This sequel is scary for all the wrong reasons, including a final scene begging for a third “Night.”
The horror, the horror.
A creepy prologue – the film’s best sequence – sets the story in motion. A shy girl is murdered during a children’s birthday party at, where else, Freddy Fazbear’s Pizza circa 1982. Her death haunts the kiddie franchise, which eventually shuttered over time.
We knew the latter part already, but why does so much of the technology within still work like new?
It’s almost as if there’s precious little thought given to this wing of Blumhouse Manor.
The first film’s unlikely hero, security guard Mike (Josh Hutcherson), is back. He’s tasked with caring for his sister Abby (Piper Rubio), who longs to reunite with the animatronic critters inhabited by the souls of dead children.
Awww. Ewww.
That means she’ll slip away at some point and enter Freddy Fazbear’s Pizza, where whoever owns the place didn’t know locks were invented centuries ago.
It doesn’t take long before Bonnie, Chica and the gang are brought back to life, along with a new threat dubbed the “Marionette.” The latter is the sequel’s big wrinkle and the closest the film comes to invoking any chills.
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The other saving grace, a term loosely applied here? Wayne Knight does his unctuous routine as a local school teacher. He’s a pro who knows exactly how to process this sub-par material – with his dignity intact.
The rest is a crush of fuzzy subplots, odd character motivations and back stories that just don’t add up. Director Emma Tammi relies on cheap jump scares to keep us awake, and once again she can’t maximize the creep factor built into these robotic goons.
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Whatever spark existed between Mike and his frenemy Vanessa (Elizabeth Lail) in the first “Freddy” goes POOF! during round two. The film also wastes Matthew Lillard and Skeet Ulrich, the dueling “Scream” connections.
An early sequence involving “ghost hunters” is similarly underwhelming but ripe with potential. That’s a pattern here.
What’s left? Presumably, some fan service tied to the source material and the notion that this IP will rake in cash no matter what’s seen on screen.
HiT or Miss: “Five Nights at Freddy’s 2” keeps the franchise alive, but that’s about the best we can say about this sloppy sequel.
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