The New ‘Five Nights at Freddy’s 2’ Trailer Amps Up the Animatronic Horror

Halloween may be behind us, but that didn’t stop Blumhouse and Universal Pictures from dropping the second trailer for Five Nights at Freddy’s 2 in the middle of the night for the rest of us to wake up to like a jumpscare.

The animatronic horror nightmare of a trailer opens up with former night-shift security guard Mike (Josh Hutcherson) and police officer Vanessa (Elizabeth Lail) trying to move on from all the messed up things that happened with the unlikely animatronic friends his little sister, Abby (Piper Rubio), befriended in the first movie. at the end of the first movie. Who, in case you didn’t see the film, attacked their creator, Matthew Lillard’s deliciously psychotic William Afton, inside one of their suits, ending his terror. But because this is a sequel and 11-year-old kids don’t have a great grasp on leaving things well alone sometimes, Abby sneaks out to try to meet up with her old animatronic friends only to find that they’re more messed up than ever and are now dead set on hunting her, Mike, and Vanessa down. C’est la vie.

For fans of Scott Cawthon’s original video game, the plotline of Five Nights at Freddy‘s 2 draws more inspiration from the second and third games, at least as the trailer hints. Case in point being the more gnarled, tarnished looks of the original four animatronics, Freddy, Bonnie, Chica, and Foxy, as well as a glimpse at FNAF 3‘s Shadow Freddy (the messed-up circuit board-faced purple one). The trailer also hints at the real origins of Freddy’s, basically being a hunting ground where Afton probably murdered a bunch of kids whose souls now reside in said animatronics. Guessing now that he was entombed inside one of them, he gave all of them bad vibes, turning them into the titular baddies gamers know and fear. But that’s just a theory. A game theory.

Speaking of that, one of the folks joining the aforementioned cast members this time around is MatPat, the YouTuber behind Game Theory, who spent a good bit of his online career exhaustively breaking down FNAF‘s lore. In a full-circle internet moment, he’ll be joining its sequel cast as Toy Bonnie alongside Kellen Goff as Toy Freddy and Megan Fox as Toy Chica, according to The Hollywood Reporter. Also joining them are Freddy Carter (Shadow and Bone), Wayne Knight (Jurassic Park), Mckenna Grace (Ghostbusters), and fellow Scream alum Skeet Ulrich.

Seeing as how returning director Emma Tammi’s 2023 film performed exceedingly well at the box office, blowing past its estimated $50 million take, earning nearly $80 million that October, and nearly cinching $300 million worldwide (later becoming the most-watched film on Peacock), time will tell if Blumhouse captures lightning in the bottle once more with its sequel film.

We’ll have to wait and see what jump scares await Five Nights at Freddy’s 2 when it releases in theaters on December 5.

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