Five Nights at Freddy’s 2: Behind the Mask

Since its 2014 release, Five Nights at Freddy’s has exploded into a cultural phenomenon, captivating audiences through games, books, ever-popular YouTube playthroughs–and now full-length feature films. What began as a relatively simple point-and-click indie horror game quickly evolved into a dense web of lore, theories, and fan speculation, sustained not just by official releases but by the participatory labor of its community. That sense of uneasy curiosity is the franchise’s lifeblood, which makes Five Nights at Freddy’s 2 (2025) such a frustrating watch: it’s a movie that seems allergic to letting its audience sit with uncertainty.

The 2023 Five Nights at Freddy’s film wasn't revolutionary, but it knew what it was doing. Fans praised it for feeling like FNAF, even when it stumbled. The animatronics looked accurately terrifying; the setting felt claustrophobic; most importantly, it trusted the audience to fill in the gaps. The film didn’t need to explain every noise or movement, because part of the fun was deciding what mattered. FNAF 2, by contrast, feels like a desperate bid for a story that is palatable to a larger audience while isolating longtime fans. It further complicates and mixes up the lore while departing from some of the games’ core functionalities. Every plot point is overexplained and dramatized, yet lacks organized storyline continuity or the inherent fear of the unknown that put FNAF on the map. 

One of my main gripes with FNAF 2 is its complete mischaracterization of the Puppet. While the games faced a constant struggle to find any kind of plot continuity, their essence largely remained the same. Throughout the games, players could trust the core animatronics to be generally consistent in their characterization. If a character’s functions drastically changed, it usually was due to a modification/rebranding of the character (ie. Freddy to Toy Freddy). Nonetheless, when a player thinks of a particular animatronic, they would have a general idea of the character and patterns to expect. 

In the FNAF 2 movie, however, nearly every aspect of the Puppet distorts/unfaithfully represents its original appearance. This new Puppet has motivations for revenge on the parents of the world, a plot choice that barely makes sense even in the context of the movie’s plot, and completely departs from the Puppet’s original mission of protecting the trapped souls suffering in death beside her. She has new wireless controlling powers that are oddly reminiscent of The Mimic, FNAF’s newest game antagonist. One of my personal least favorite choices is that they gave the Puppet a human form, losing the blank, fear-inducing anonymity of her original design. The FNAF animatronics inspire terror through unsettling perversions of fun and innocence. By having a live human portrayal of the Puppet, we are no longer facing the same faceless, inhuman entity we cannot fully understand. This human, vengeance-driven Puppet is too heavy-handed with none of the mystery. We feel no comfort from her protection of the innocent, no confused fear. 

The change in Abby Schmidt’s character is equally baffling. The first movie established her as a quiet, observant child with an uncanny connection to the animatronics. Here, she’s largely reduced to a plot device, manipulated by the Puppet in ways that make Abby feel more like a MacGuffin than a mystery. Her agency evaporates in favor of finding a way to move the Puppet’s misguided agenda forward, stripping away the ambiguity that made her character compelling. She used to be another character whose ghostly connections we couldn’t quite understand. Now, she’s just another cheery lamb, led to slaughter with no secrets left to unsettle us. 

Image Credits: Universal Pictures

Even more frustrating is the film’s obsessive focus on Mike and Vanessa’s will-they-won’t-they relationship. What was acceptable as a background subtle tension in the first film becomes the emotional centerpiece here, complete with prolonged scenes of the two trying to process their trauma and navigate the complications of seeing someone whose father is a child murderer. It’s not that these beats couldn’t work in theory, but they consume so much runtime that the actual horror becomes secondary. We’re watching a relationship drama that happens to have killer animatronics in it, rather than a horror film with human stakes. The franchise has always been about children, loss, and the violence that lurks beneath nostalgic, cheery costumes. Mike and Vanessa’s touchy-feely subplot feels imported from a different genre entirely, one that’s far less interested in adrenaline-induced dread than in making sure we understand that these characters are working through their issues. The problem is that nobody came to a FNAF movie for couples therapy. 

Then there’s the introduction of Vanessa’s brother Michael, apparently trying to carry on William Afton’s legacy. The idea of two Mikes feels like a cheap attempt at a surprise explanation for the confusion over Mike’s true identity from the games. It’s confusing lore, plain and simple–the kind of thing that could possibly be woven into a fan theory video, not a feature-length film. It  seems shaky, both to long time fans and casual watchers alike. 

Michael’s introduction, however, could point to something more troubling and confusing: a pattern emerging across these films that suggests Blumhouse is attempting to adapt each FNAF game one by one, complete with specific game mechanics translated to screen. On paper, this seems like an entertaining and exciting prospect. However, if we are truly following the games sequentially, the timeline already seems to be broken beyond repair. Vanessa has been introduced far too early–her role in the games does not appear until much later in the franchise. Additionally, if the end credit scene is to be taken at face value, Henry Emily has been killed by the Puppet, which raises an impossible question: who will deliver the famous “connection terminated” speech from FNAF 6? That monologue is one of the most chillingly iconic moments in the entire franchise, a devastating culmination of Henry’s arc and the franchise’s closest moment to an emotional climax. Without Henry, that payoff evaporates. The films seem determined to hit specific fan service points from each game without considering how to create a coherent narrative. This story tries to be faithful and original simultaneously, yet succeeds at neither. 

The first film, as a standalone, was nowhere near perfect. It worked, however, because it was unique. It gave fans a fresh new look at what FNAF could be in the world of cinema, bringing the famous animatronics into the real world. Unfortunately, this shiny glamour has worn off. Now that fans are not blinded by the excitement of a new medium, the movies’ cracks are showing. FNAF 2 is not protected from critique by novelty. Now, with rose-tinted glasses firmly removed, we can see that this movie is a scrabbling, desperate attempt to reel in the dedicated Five Nights at Freddy's fanbase with cheap plushy jokes and beautiful animatronics. The film tries to lure us in like Afton with his shiny toys, using spectacle and nostalgia to distract from the rot and failure hiding underneath these animatronic figureheads. But we can see beyond the mask now. Five Nights at Freddy's 2 is not the shiny perfection it pretends to be.

Rating: INDY

---

Sasha Jayne is the current Editor-in-Chief of the INDY and a junior majoring in Psychology with a minor in Cognitive Science. Their true loves and passions are metal and punk music, The Rocky Horror Picture Show, and wearing excessive amounts of black clothing.