"Five Nights At Freddy's 2" Review

 Let's get this over with: Five Nights At Freddy's 2 is the sequel to 2023's surprise smash hit Five Nights At Freddy's, which grossed nearly $300M from fans of the videogame series which began in 2014, but as a gamer have never played. I didn't write up a review for the first one, but gave it a 5/10 - catch on cable/streaming score. I vaguely remember it having some interesting elements, but had to look up a synopsis to try and remember what happened and it was so convoluted I stopped caring since I'm not getting paid to write these reviews.

Anyway, that which is rewarded gets repeated so we're back with the original brain trust of director Emma Tammi and screenwriter Scott Cawthon (who is also the creator of the games) guiding returning stars Josh Hutcherson and Piper Rubio as siblings Mike and Abby Schmidt, Elizabeth Lail as local cop and daughter of evil serial killer Vanessa Shelly, and Matthew Lillard as William Afton, her child-killing father and founder of the Freddy Fazbear's Pizza chain whose animatronic mascots were powered by the souls of murdered children and, no, I'm not making that up.

It's some time after the events of the first movie and Abby misses her murderbot pals which may be why she insanely believes she can pull off a hairstyle that's part bob and has bangs, something most women struggle to pull off just one of those. She has an jerk teacher (Wayne Knight) who won't let her participate in the science fair.

Meanwhile, a team of ghost hunters investigate the original Freddy Fazbear's Pizza location and get murdered by the various spirit robots or something, led by the Marionette, a new monster who harbors the soul of a little girl murdered by Afton in the prologue and whose father is played by Skeet Ulrich who seems to be here solely to be able to say the original killers from Scream were together again in a movie though they never meet.

So, anyway some bloodless PG-13 mayhem transpires predictably - one kill sequence I called right before it happened, it was so telegraphed - and it ends up setting up the inevitable sequel which I will not be watching after only having watched this because the missus wanted to see it. (I made her watch Speed later, which is hardly payback since that's good.)

While the first one was no great shakes, the decline in quality across the board while it still grossed over $200M doesn't bode well for the future of horror cinema.

Score: 2/10. Skip it.