On Dec. 5, the sequel to the 2023 movie “Five Nights At Freddy’s” was released. The first movie was a great blend of jump scares, similar to those found in the game, and just plain creepiness. The second movie is based around the second game, in which you play as the night guard in an old pizza place for kids, much like Chuck-E-Cheese; however, the mascots for the pizza place, also known as animatronics, are possessed by a child who died a long time ago.
Because the new movie is about the second game, new characters were introduced such as the toy animatronics, which differ from the mascots in the first movie in that humans cannot go inside of them and their appearance is also more similar to a toy. These include the animatronic named Mangle, designed to be taken apart but was mangled when the children playing with it were too rough; the withered animatronics; and the puppet, who controls all of the other animatronics..
In the second movie, Mike and Abby try to live a normal life, but Abby seems to miss her friends—the first movie’s animatronics—because her teachers and kids at school are not kind to her. She keeps asking Mike to go back to Freddy’s, but he is hesitant to tell her that her friends, have been destroyed and aren’t there anymore. Neither of them know about the older location with the toy animatronics, still inside, waiting to escape and get revenge.
The second movie also provided an opportunity for more backstory than the first movie, whose backstory differed a little bit from the video games. I did not go into the second movie expecting to get new backstory information for the games, but I did expect it to continue the lives of the characters from the first movie. The second movie did give new aspects to how they tried to go back to being normal after the first movie’s events, which offered a new storyline as opposed to simply repeating the game.
Something I disliked about the first movie was one scene in the middle, in which the movie shifts to a fun and playful setting. I understand that the point of this scene is to show why Mike’s sister trusts the animatronics and calls them her friends despite their evil intentions, but I feel that there were other ways this could have been shown. This scene paused the horror aspect of the movie, instead of keeping the tension. Then the movie had to work really hard to bring the tension back up really fast in time for the climax.
When I went into the theatre to watch the sequel, I was really hoping that another scene like this did not happen. Luckily, it did not, and the film makers found many other ways to show why that character trusted the animatronics without relieving the suspense of the movie.
What I did not love about the new movie was the lack of the character William Afton, who is the main antagonist in the story. However, I understand that his absence in this movie is important; if they make a third movie, it will probably follow the pattern and be based off of the third game, in which Afton plays a larger role in the plot.
I would recommend this movie to anyone that likes horror movies or “Five Nights At Freddy’s,” but I would suggest seeing the first movie if you haven’t already so that you can understand the characters better. Overall, I thought this movie was great because it brought in some new characters while keeping most of the old ones, and it was just as scary—if not more so—than the first one.
