Five Nights at Freddy's 2 (2025) review

Mike (Josh Hutcherson) and Vanessa (Elizabeth Lail), both survivors of the events of the first movie (based on the video game created by Scott Cawthon, who wrote the screenplay), want to move on with their lives but can't: Mike's eleven-year-old sister Abby (Piper Rubio), who's on the autism spectrum, misses the closed-down Freddy Fazbear's Pizza because she believes the mechanized killers there are her friends, while Vanessa is drawn to the same location because her childhood pal Charlotte (Audrey Lynn Marie) was killed there.  Since the original release made so much money at the box office (approximately $297m with only a $20m budget) it was clear Blumhouse would crank out another one, except it's embarrassingly awful in nearly every single way, from the subpar acting to the rancid dialogue to the fact that none of it makes any amount of sense and the storyline has no rhythm to it.  There are deaths in it - Wayne Knight's robotics teacher gets his head smashed - but there's no real gore or cheap thrills, as the producers were clearly aiming for that coveted PG-13 rating.  I wish kids wouldn't blow their disposable income on slop like this, and spend it on vape pens instead.