Introducing Endless Mode: A New Games & Anime Site from Paste
Are the Five Nights at Freddy’s animatronics truly scary? The franchise insists that they are, but there’s something about the wide-eyed, cartoon-like creatures that holds them back from classic horror movie monster creepiness. Still, the opening moments of the first official trailer for Five Nights at Freddy’s 2, which feature Josh Hutcherson and McKenna Grace wandering into the original Freddy Fazbear’s pizza, do their best to create a genuinely spooky atmosphere—for instance, did you know that a little girl died in that very location?
The first Five Nights at Freddy’s movie was a wild box office success, and based on the trailer the second movie seems to be trying to replicate that original formula. Freddy Fazbear’s Pizza is back, and so are the brightly-colored animatronics that perpetually haunt the chain, everything colored slightly by the glow of nostalgia. Josh Hutcherson’s character is still generically likeable, this time concerned—and legitimately so—about the fact that his younger sister Abby still sees the animatronics as her lost friends. Drawings of them litter her room, and one night she receives remote directions that lead her right back into danger. So clearly there are still some lingering childhood developmental issues to address.
Video game adaptations seem to be a winning strategy lately (see: the box office success of A Minecraft Movie last April), proving that the allure of basing a movie on pre-existing beloved IP can be a massive financial success. This all makes sense—who wouldn’t want to revisit nostalgic worlds and characters, this time rendered on the big screen? But there’s something a bit sad about how all these adaptations are tethered to the past achievement of an original work that was ultimately designed for another medium. Maybe that’s why the animatronics of the Five Nights at Freddy’s 2 trailer inspire more nostalgia than fear. It doesn’t seem like the film is meant to be genuine horror, so much as a vehicle to revisit a story that might have been scarier when the target audience was younger.
Directed by Emma Tammi and written by Scott Cawthon, Five Nights at Freddy’s 2 is set to release on Dec. 5, 2025. Check out the first trailer below.
