Five Nights At Freddy’s 2 Premise Can Avoid Repeating The Original Movie’s 32% Rotten Tomatoes Disaster

Although Five Nights At Freddy’s was a box office hit, Five Nights At Freddy’s 2 still needs to address the original movie’s disastrous critical reception. It took almost ten years for the adaptation of the cult video game Five Nights At Freddy’s to arrive on cinema screens. Despite these myriad delays, the movie went on to become 2023’s biggest horror hit. By the time Five Nights At Freddy’s ending wrapped up the movie’s story, it was clear that a new horror franchise had been born. However, reviewers weren’t overly impressed with the franchise’s first long-awaited survival horror story.

Five Nights At Freddy’s earned over $295 million at the box office, and this number might have been even higher if the adaptation wasn’t simultaneously released on Peacock. As such, the Five Nights at Freddy’s sequel was inevitable regardless of how director Emma Tammi’s hit was received by critics. This was just as well since, despite Five Nights at Freddy’s box office success, the original movie was a critical disaster. The movie earned a meager 32% from critics on Rotten Tomatoes, with most of its reviewers lambasting the movie’s plotting, pacing, and pointless focus on the protagonist’s unnecessarily complex backstory.

Five Nights At Freddy’s 2 Won’t Require As Much Set Up And Backstory As The Original

Five Nights At Freddy’s 2 Can Solve The Original Movie’s Critical Failure

Five Nights At Freddy’s received criticism for centering on the backstory of its hero Mike, with numerous reviewers complaining that the franchise’s famous killer animatronics got nowhere near enough screen time. Fortunately, Five Nights At Freddy’s 2 can solve this issue as the series no longer needs to establish the infamously byzantine lore of the source material. The Five Nights At Freddy’s series boasts a frankly astounding amount of supplementary material that expands the fictional universe of the games, so it makes sense that the original movie earned the ire of critics by focusing on this over more exciting chase sequences.

Another issue that critics had with the movie, Five Nights At Freddy’s PG-13 rating, is less likely to be solved in the sequel. Five Nights At Freddy’s 2 will almost certainly be as family-friendly as the original movie, since the sequel hopes to replicate its box office success. However, reviewers noted that this resulted in a surprisingly bloodless adaptation where most of the grisly violence took place entirely offscreen. Five Nights At Freddy’s 2 will struggle to avoid the same accusations, although the reviews of earlier PG-13 horror hits like The Ring and M3GAN prove the sequel could still succeed.

Blumhouse’s Horror Sequel History Proves Five Nights At Freddy’s 2 Can Succeed

The Ouija Franchise Successfully Improved Its Reception

It may seem tough for the sequel to outdo a critically reviled original movie, but Blumhouse’s sequel history proves that Five Nights At Freddy’s 2 can beat its predecessor among reviewers. The Ouija franchise was an earlier Blumhouse horror series that began with a critical catastrophe but turned things around with a far better-received sequel, 2016’s Ouija: Origin Of Evil. Ouija: Origin Of Evil earned 83% from critics despite Ouija earning a paltry 6%. This shows that Five Nights At Freddy’s 2 can turn around the critical reception of the franchise, but the Five Nights At Freddy’s sequel needs to change its formula to achieve this.