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Five Nights At Freddy’s 2’s Review Scores Confirm What We All Suspected

December 9, 2025

The review scores for Five Nights At Freddy’s 2 do a prime job of showing how the film appealed massively to one audience while being largely lambasted by another, painting a picture that many predicted for the movie beforehand. Five Nights At Freddy’s is a truly unique film franchise on several levels, most notably because of the story needing to mirror the extensive game lore that came beforehand.

While video game movie adaptations have oftentimes led to universally reviled results, the first Five Nights At Freddy’s was generally well-received by fans, particularly because it made references to the wider fandom, such as having a cameo from YouTube personality MatPat, who famously made many theory videos about the franchise. As it stands, the sequel has followed suit, leading to a fascinating review result.

Five Nights At Freddy’s 2’s Review Scores Show The Movie Was Panned By Critics, But Not By Fans

Five Nights At Freddy’s 2‘s review scores mirror those of the original 2023 horror film, while also bumping things up a notch. The 2025 film’s Rotten Tomatoes reviews paint a divided picture of the movie overall, with the release garnering a strikingly low 15% Tomatometer score from critics, but a solid 87% Popcornmeter score from wider audiences – with this 15% actually being an upgrade from a previous low of 11%.

This, in effect, is a more dramatic division of the scores Five Nights At Freddy’s possesses, with the original movie itself having a 33% Tomatometer and an 86% Popcornmeter on Rotten Tomatoes.

Five Nights At Freddy’s 2 having a more exaggerated version of the original film’s results makes sense given the sequel leans into many of the elements that initially divided receptions to the first film – and since it’s clear the series aims to appeal to those with a pre-existing knowledge of the FNAF games and lore.

Why Five Nights At Freddy’s 2’s Review Scores Are So Different

Bonnie in Five Nights at Freddy's 2 — Bonnie in Five Nights at Freddy’s 2

Five Nights At Freddy’s 2, while a fun horror flick in many regards, is the kind of movie that arguably loses critics because of how it seeks to appeal to general audiences. This is perhaps most easily evidenced in the way the story explores Five Nights At Freddy’s 2‘s various animatronics, which leans heavily into using jumpscares, and oftentimes focuses more on using these figures for comedy than for horror.

It’s also worth taking into account how the movie’s focus on adapting elements of the franchise and the games that created this universe may have proved jarring for critics who didn’t have much experience with the games or fandom beforehand.

For example, a key plot point towards the end of the movie introduces the idea of wearing a Freddy mask in order to hide from some of the animatronics – which is a core mechanic in the FNAF 2 game, but which isn’t fully explained or justified in the movie, meaning the main protagonist choosing to try and hide in this way would seem out of place for those without this game context.

All in all, these decisions serve to explain why Five Nights At Freddy’s 2 has thus far gotten a largely positive response out of casual cinemagoers – who will, for the most part, be existing fans of the series, especially this early into its theatrical release – and why the film has gotten a decidedly different reception from many critics.