The somewhat moribund Five Nights At Freddy's movie clearly drummed up enough business to spawn this unnecessary early-2000s-set sequel one year on from the events of the first film which - somewhat inevitably - sees Mike (Josh Hutcherson), troubled Vanessa (Elizabeth Lail) and young Abby (Piper Rubio) drawn to the original abandoned fast-food joint for Round 2, along with an expendable reality-TV crew and a suspiciously creepy security guard, and this time unleashing the animatronic killers on the local community. With an unwarrantedly long running time, the film crawls along, mostly in darkness, with general dullness nullifying the occasional attempt at generating shock or suspense. Apart from Josh Hutcherson outclassing the material once again, it all feels rather forced and half-hearted - even Sembello's Maniac appears in the 1982-set opening flashback one year before it was released, and the returning Matthew Lillard joined by a Skeet Ulrich cameo (though not appearing together) feels like simple genre stunt-casting. Perhaps the mixing of a largely children-led story with more adult horror is awkward and neuters the scenario of potential scares, and as a gateway horror it may employ some classic Scooby-Doo period genre tropes and has a fair throwback music score, but overall this sequel offers little of interest and has a mid-credits scene that threatens a trilogy-closer.
No comments:
Post a Comment