The smash-hit box office performance of the first “Five Nights at Freddy’s” (FNAF) movie in 2023, along with over a decade of video game content to adapt to the screen, basically guaranteed another installment in the series: “Five Nights at Freddy’s 2.” The newest film grossed over $100 million worldwide over its opening weekend, and the series seems to just be getting started.

The FNAF movies, both directed by Emma Tammi, are based on the record-breaking indie games of the same name, which grew from a small horror game project created by Scott Cawthon to one of the largest online fandoms of all time, and a multimedia empire of games, books, and most recently, movies. The possibility of a movie had been discussed among fans for years, but was finally brought to the screen by Blumhouse in 2023, becoming the highest-grossing horror movie of the year and earning almost $300 million worldwide.

Adapting games or books into films has always been tricky, due to larger studios wanting to find a balance between appealing to the fans of the franchise, and also wanting to bring in a new audience, like Colombia’s “Uncharted” adaptation, causing uproar among fans of the franchise because of the inaccuracy to the game.

The CEO of Blumhouse, Jason Blum, however, has explicitly stated in interviews that “the only way to pull this off was to make the movie for fans of Five Nights at Freddy’s and, if anyone else came along, fine.” 

Most other game-to-screen adaptations, like the “Resident Evil” or “DOOM” movies, are more geared towards mass appeal rather than pleasing the already existing fanbases, so Blum’s sentiment is a nice breath of fresh air in the adaptation landscape of today. The prioritization of fan enjoyment is reflected in the critical success of the movie in comparison to the audience ratings. The first movie had a 33% on Rotten Tomatoes, but an over 90% audience score. The second film follows this trend with around 15% on Rotten Tomatoes, but an audience score of over 80%.

The movie takes place a year after the events of the first, with the characters Mike (Josh Hutcherson) and Vanessa (Elizabeth Lail) trying to help Mike’s sister, Abby (Piper Rubio), cope with missing the animatronic cast that she befriended in the first movie. 

When Abby sneaks out to the original Freddy Fazbear’s Pizzeria location to try and see them, she discovers some of the older animatronics and the main antagonist of the series, The Marionette, who manipulates her into setting the animatronics free to terrorize the town. The ending and post-credit scenes set up some really good questions for the later installments to answer.

As much as fans loved the movie, it’s still agreed that it is, for lack of a better term, fan service slop. The film capitalizes on the fact that the more easter eggs and fun callbacks to the game franchise they add, the more people will talk about it. The easter eggs in the movie are usually more accurate to the game franchise than the story is.

State High senior Mackie Schark said, “I kind of liked that it was fan service, because I was the fan it was servicing, and I wanted it to be that way.” 

The film adds as many moments as possible that make the viewer point to the screen and go, “Hey, that’s the thing from the game,” like when Mike puts on the Freddy Fazbear mask to disguise himself among the animatronics, while also trying to differentiate the movie from the FNAF universe, games, and books. 

Contrary to the people who liked it, some people who aren’t exactly fans of the franchise didn’t like the movie at all. “Look, I’m a fan of movies, I’m a fan of film, that [movie] was, uh, it was a product. That’s what it felt like to me. I had a good time because I saw it with my friends, but…it was really bad,” State High senior Emerson Rand said.

Overall, coming in with a 16% on Rotten Tomatoes and an 84% audience score, the movie is a really good time if you liked the first one, or if you’re a fan of the franchise, and it’s especially fun if you see it with friends. It’s a great return to the first installment, and still leaves loose ends in its ending and post-credit scenes to be answered in the future.