The most impressive aspect of Five Nights at Freddy’s 2 is that sometimes it’s functional. Though still bound by the first film’s messy mash of video game lore, sloppy logic, and uninteresting characters, there are moments when it almost finds a groove as a spooky horror about haunted robots. But those mild grins are few and far between, cut short by the malfunctioning sparks of a film that doesn’t so much continue the story as it does add more references from the games and cliffhangers for future films.

Oh, how I wanted to find something to like in the film’s protagonist, Mike (Josh Hutcherson), the hapless security guard who lost his brother and is now caring for his young sister, Abby (Piper Rubio). The most interesting attributes of his anger-infused trauma and investigations via dreams have been surgically removed to make him the most boring of characters. In the previous film, he rarely investigated the horrific history behind the Freddy Fazbear’s Pizza restaurant, having all that information spoon-fed to him by police officer Vanessa (Elizabeth Lail). He is given a chance in this film to do more sleuthing, as when he finds a phone number revealing more about the animatronic murders. Mike decides to call that number and learn the truth… entirely off-screen.

What Mike discovers is a more competent villain than the aloof child ghosts or the manically murderous William Afton (Matthew Lillard). For most of the film, Mike and Vanessa must stop the evil Charlotte, a murdered child who possesses various robots and humans. I didn’t find her motivations for killing all that unique, but she’s an undeniable improvement from the needlessly cryptic antagonists of the first film. I still can’t tell you why William Afton needed to maintain his murderous Muppet factory, but I can tell you why Charlotte wants to seek revenge on adults. I also dug her look and abilities, which allow her to possess bodies and give them glowing eyes and colorful streaks down their cheeks. I wish the film had more to do with her, rather than getting drowned out by all the fan-pleasing references and bland characters.

For a video game franchise that seems to pride itself on an abundance of lore, there’s a wealth of weird holes in this mystery. For example, Charlotte was apparently a victim of a different, more elaborate Freddy Fazbear Pizza that Vanessa forgot to mention, but is apparently so local that Abby can bike there. Conveniently, Vanessa also forgot to mention that there were other animatronics, allowing the gullible and lonely Abby to seek out the giant robot animals she calls her friends once more, despite one friend she makes at school being forgotten amid the shuffling of subplots. Only these robots are not the same Freddy ensemble, as they are more intricate in design, can speak, and are evil. The first film’s animatronics were also pretty sinister for killing intruders, but they’ve apparently reformed so that the film can go all Terminator 2 for its finale of evil robots versus reformed robots.

This film certainly has style but hardly any substance. Vanessa keeps having nightmares about her father’s past and his influence of evil, but it’s rarely explored beyond one decently edited sequence, foreboding for something that won’t be coming in this film. Since the previous movie, Mike’s community has embraced Freddy Fazbear Pizza, hosting a franchise festival for some reason, with no one giving haunted tours of the spooky restaurants (aside from some unfortunate ghost hunters to fulfill the film’s animatronic murder quota). I get that the festival provides the perfect cover for the animatronics to mill about the public without being noticed, but wasn’t Halloween sufficient for accepting the animatronics as mere costumes?

Realizing that the murderous puppets are the real stars, the film doesn’t even try to make the characters interesting. Mike really doesn’t need to stress to his family and friends that he’s not dating Vanessa. Their inevitable “date” has zero romantic chemistry, as they spend the whole dinner talking about the pizza restaurant and their abilities to tap into dreams. I can understand why Abby would only be talking about the robots, reflecting the youthful fan obsession, but is there really nothing going on in the lives of these two adults? Vanessa mentions a gym class she is taking, but even that goes nowhere, leading to more spooky visions of her father. The bulk of the characters exist only for exposition or Freddy fodder, as with Skeet Ulrich divulging more murder case info and Wayne Knight playing a vindictive science teacher who hates animatronics. And the rest exist only for lukewarm punchlines, which might be funny in a vacuum, but are jarring in the film. Why would anyone call the dull-as-dishwater and emotion-free Mike an asshole?

Five Nights at Freddy’s 2 makes a few upgrades, but it’s still a cobbled mess of malfunctioning components. For every effectively spooky moment in the dark, there are at least two moments in the light of clunky dialogue for boring characters and half-thought additions for petering out subplots. It’s yet another video game film that feels less like a coherent narrative and more like a rattling of references to please the gamers who come in with their franchise laundry list, where a Circus Baby cameo trumps compelling characters or consistent pacing.

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