Five Nights at Freddy's 2 proves once more that not every sequel is worth making

The first Five Nights at Freddy's was nothing special, but it was much, much better than this sometimes incoherent mess. And that's not just me talking: a couple of other viewers who are Freddy's fans said they found it confusing. A small sample, to be sure, but it illustrates the point. If the movie is hard to make sense of for any of the franchise's fans, it's a problem.

Despite less than rapturous reviews, the 2023 movie was a box office hit, so of course a sequel was green-lit to make more money. It certainly wasn't for any conceivable artistic reason. But it's bad regardless, and worst of all, tedious.

To recap: in the first film, set in 2000, Mike (Josh Hutcherson) took on a job as night security guard at the abandoned Freddy Fazbear's Pizza to keep looking after his younger sister Abby (Piper Rubio).

Strange things happened while he was there. Mike learned about it all from police officer Vanessa (Elizabeth Lail). The old animatronics in the joint were haunted by the ghosts of children who had disappeared two decades earlier (hence the closure) and the lonely Abby began to befriend the young spirits. More people get killed and it turned out that Vanessa was the daughter of serial killer William Afton (Matthew Lillard) who murdered the kids - including Mike's younger brother Garrett - and who controlled the robots.

It wasn't the greatest story and was pretty mild for a horror movie but it evidently appealed to many, so here we are again. The animatronics from Jim Henson's Creature Shop that were the most distinctive part of the earlier film get an expanded role here and even get to venture beyond the confines of their home.

There's an atmospheric if implausible prologue set in the early 1980s showing young Charlotte (Audrey Lynn-Marie) rescuing a kid who's been yanked backstage during a party at Freddy's (everyone ignores or directly rejects her cries for help).

Back in the film's present, two decades later, Mike and Vanessa are trying to move on with their lives after their prior ordeal. It's not easy. Vanessa is haunted by dreams of her father and Mike has to deal with Abby wanting to be reunited with her animatronic friends. She has trouble fitting in at school (there's one kid who makes friendly overtures but he soon disappears from the story).

Wayne Knight (Newman from Seinfeld) plays Abby's bafflingly nasty science teacher Mr Berg: he exists solely to become a victim of one of the film's not-so-violent killings once the animatronics leave their home.

Getting a bigger budget doesn't matter if you don't spend time and effort getting the script right. If it ain't on the page, it ain't on the stage, as the saying goes, and that includes sound stages.

Scott Cawthorn designed the video games that were the source of inspiration and he's got sole writing credit (there were two other credited writers on the first movie). But what works for a game to be played doesn't necessarily work for a movie to be watched, and the haphazard and confusing construction and paper-thin characters are among the movie's flaws. Returning director Emma Tammi isn't able to help much. Although there is the occasional atmospheric moment, there's no real emotion and no cumulative feeling of fear. And it's hard to care about any of the characters.

The good parts? The production design and gizmos are impressive, as you'd expect with a bigger budget. And Freddy Carter is effectively creepy as a new security guard, though he doesn't get much to do. Having Lillard and Skeet Ulrich pop up for brief appearances (not together) just provides a reminder of how good they were in Scream (1996) and how much better, even in its weaker instalments, that horror series was than this.

If you're a diehard fan and decide to watch this, stay through the credits: there's a scene part of the way through and an audio clip at the end that suggest there might be more nights at Freddy's to come. Let's hope they're better than this.