Five Nights at Freddy’s 2 (2025): Fan service gone wrong
Photo courtesy of Eduardodiamond/Wikimedia Commons
Five Night at Freddy’s 2 (2025) was unfortunately unable to live up to the legacy of the franchise that it was based off of.
Spoiler Warning!
On Dec. 5, 2025, the highly anticipated Five Nights At Freddy’s 2 (2025) released. This film had everything going for it, led by a talented cast including Josh Hutcherson and horror icon Matthew Lillard. Most importantly, the movie is based off of the hit horror game franchise, Five Nights at Freddy’s.
For anyone unaware, the original Five Nights At Freddy’s (2014) game is a mascot horror developed by Scott Cawthorne. It tells the story of an abandoned pizzeria which closed after an accident involving the death of multiple children. The player takes on the role of a security guard tasked with spending the night at the pizzeria, fending off the angry spirits of the dead children, who have possessed animatronics they formerly used for entertainment. The game made a masterful use of lighting, jump scares, and impressive character designs where one could easily believe the nightmare-inducing monsters could reasonably double as children’s entertainment. The game quickly became a pop-culture phenomenon, the franchise growing to include sequel games, spin offs, books, and now, movies.
Five Nights at Freddy’s 2 (2025) had a controversial audience reception. On Rotten Tomatoes, there is a huge divide between critics and audiences, scoring a loyal 84 percent on the audience score, but an unfortunate 16 percent by the critics.
In a way, this is troubling, implying that the fanbase might accept mediocrity because of the fan service it offers. The movie has indeed been accused of being a “fan-service debacle” by a review on Variety. That being said, there is a way to include fan service correctly. Though it didn’t get a much higher critic score, only a 33 percent on Rotten Tomatoes, the first Five Nights at Freddy’s (2023) were an enjoyable watch, catering to fans mostly through respect for the original game in designing its plot.
The first two Five Nights at Freddy’s games have simple gameplay, so it is reasonable that the movies need to invent new plot lines. This was simply accomplished much better in the first film. The main character, Mike, has a little sister who connects with the spirits in the animatronics, and he has a missing brother that connects him to the tragedy of pizzeria as a whole. Vannessa serves as Mike’s guide in the movie. Her father was the one who killed the missing children, so she feels a responsibility toward anyone who gets caught in the web of the pizzeria’s dark secrets. It managed a straightforward plot in a way that was still largely faithful to the original game.
Five Nights at Freddy’s 2 (2025) does neither of these things. It was already in a difficult position thanks to its source material. In the original games, Five Nights at Freddy’s 2 (2014) was a prequel to the original installment, while its movie counterpart is meant to be a continuation of the first movie instead. The second game is what originally introduced so much of the lore of the franchise due to its prequel status, namely the introduction of the man behind the slaughter, William Afton. Unfortunately, all of that lore had already been utilized in the first game, leaving the movie adaption to make up a continuation of the previous film while still trying to save the actual sequel content that exists in the games for a movie adaption of Five Nights at Freddy’s 3.
The only lore from the second game that could be utilized in Five Nights at Freddy’s 2 (2025) was the spirit of the murdered child Charlotte Emily, who possesses the Puppet. Something that made the Puppet particularly special in the games was that she allowed the other children to possess the animatronics in the first place. Unfortunately, this could no longer be true thanks to the Puppet’s new place in a sequel rather than a prequel. The movie version of the Puppet simply controls versions of the animatronics that are nothing more than robots. Her goal in puppeteering them is to murder all adults, because no adults helped her when she warned them about a murderer. Even with the villain of this movie being a child, the goal is so ridiculous that it is hard not to chuckle every time it is stated. Instead, Charlotte having a vendetta against Vannessa, her apparent best friend who knew her father was a murderer, would have worked as a better plotline.
The movie’s subplots were much worse. Mike’s little sister Abby taking an interest in robotics so she could restore the animatronic bodies of the ghost children from the first movie was interesting, but poorly utilized. Her robotics teacher having a nonsensical vendetta against her was just plain hard to watch, and added nothing besides incentivizing the robots to kill another person. Then there was the reveal that nobody asked for—Vannessa’s murder-loving brother, a second Mike, which suggests that two characters thought to be the same in the games are actually different, which just confused fans.
Yes, Five Nights at Freddy’s (2025) had some fun fan service, like MatPat or the sequence of Mike having to use the mechanics of the game. However, these moments were just that—fan service. They do not and should not make up for the poorly written plot this movie had. Fans of a franchise should be more critical, not less, of the additions of their franchise. You should encourage something you love to be the best it can be.