Pop Culture Happy Hour - Five Nights at Freddy’s 2 and What’s Making Us Happy

Episode Date: December 5, 2025

In the new film Five Nights at Freddy’s 2, Josh Hutcherson returns as the protagonist trying to survive in a haunted children’s restaurant called Freddy Fazbear’s Pizza. The creepy animatronic robots remain, and the sequel adds fresh lore and extends the action beyond the original abandoned restaurant.Follow Pop Culture Happy Hour on Letterboxd at letterboxd.com/nprpopcultureThe first-ever NPR Pod Club Awards are coming up, and YOU get to crown the winner of the People’s Choice Award. Vote for Pop Culture Happy Hour here!See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for sponsorship and to manage your podcast sponsorship preferences.NPR Privacy Policy

The first ever NPR Pod Club awards are coming up, and you get to crown the winner of the People's Choice Award. We know there are a lot of great shows at NPR, but we all know who's the best. Vote for pop culture happy hour at NPR.org slash people's choice. We'll have a link in our episode description. May the best pod win us. The movie Five Nights at Freddy's became a gigantic horror hit. In that film, Gen Z nostalgia for a hit video game, met Gen X nostalgia for children's restaurants like showbiz pizza and Chuckie Cheese.

Two years later, a sequel has all those creepy animatronics come blinking ominously back to life in a sequel that takes us back to Freddie Fasbear's Pizza and Beyond. I'm Stephen Thompson. Joining me today on NPR's Pop Culture Happy Hour to talk about Five Nights at Freddy's Two is freelance music and culture journalist Rihanna Cruz. Hey, Rihanna. Hey, Stephen, it's just you and me today, buddy. I know, I know. It's good to have you.

So the Five Nights at Freddy's movies are spun off from an enormously successful video game series. In the games and in the first movie, our protagonist has to survive nights spent in a haunted children's restaurant called Freddy Fasbear's Pizza. The villains, as you might imagine, are murderous animatronic robots. The film's star Josh Hutcherson as a down-on-his-luck security guard who's raising his younger, sister, played by Piper Rubio. The first movie introduces us to the haunted animatronics, the serial killer who helped birth of them, and the serial killer's daughter, a policewoman played by Elizabeth Lale. And it gives us a fair bit of lore about missing and murdered children. The new film adds fresh lore here and there, but it mostly focuses on extending the action

beyond the abandoned restaurant that gave the first film. It's spooky setting. And it introduces a few new characters, including one so obviously doomed. he might as well be wearing a giant bullseye. Five Nights at Freddy's 2 was directed by Emma Tommy, who did the first movie, and it was written by Scott Cawthon, who created the video games. It's in theaters now, Rihanna.

You and I talked about the first Five Nights at Freddy's movie on this show when it came out. What did you think of this one? So, much like the first one, I did not enjoy this movie. Five Nights at Freddy's 2 is held together by cardboard, twine, and fan service, and fan service does not a movie make famously. I was watching it.

I didn't think there was much of a plot. The characters weren't exciting. I'm a horror guy myself, and I think the PG-13 rating definitely gets in the way of a lot of the horror appeal of this movie, but also at the same time, this is a movie catered to children, and I think ages like 8 to 15,

who played the video games and are obsessed with the video games, and judging by the amount of kids that were in my theater, like literal children. Little children, it's not a not scary movie. There are some terrifying visages if I was a younger kid, but the kids were like rip it and roar. I heard cackles, I heard screams, and I think for them, this is a good movie,

but for me, who is into horror movies and isn't necessarily totally familiar with the game. You know, I'm tangentially familiar as someone in Gen Z, but it did not land for me. I'm curious to hear what you thought, Stephen. I will say, Rihanna, when I think back on the first movie, I have some pretty fond memories of it, in part because these games and these movies are trying to split the difference

between, as I said, in the intro, Gen Z nostalgia for the games and Gen X nostalgia for these restaurants. And I think I even said on the show something along the lines of, I want to hang out at this haunted pizzeria, even though there are murderous animatronics there. This is giving me nostalgia for restaurants where I had a great time as a kid, and I'm a Chuckie Cheese grown up. I would go to Chuckie Cheese for enjoyment today, and I'm 53 years old. And so the first film did a ton of world building and a ton of just strung together tons and tons of lore, and did a lot of work kind of building this world.

And I remember saying to you in the discussion of that first film, I'm not sure I'm totally down with where this story is going. I'm not sure that all the lore about these dead kids is really my jam. The good news is there's less of that in this movie. The bad news is it's replaced by nothing. Yeah, that's the issue. There is almost no story here. In lieu of this like beautifully designed and beautifully conceived restaurant with these characters that are omages to showbiz pizza and chucky cheese while being their own original new thing. All that is replaced by these dimly lit spaces, just these like cobwebby gray corridors.

And you're not really getting to like play around in this new world. You're just rehashing. these are your murderers, these characters are trying to escape the murderers. And what it has in lieu of a story or kind of snappy dialogue or jokes or any kind of real energy attached, what it has is jump scares. And the jump scares, Rihanna, the jump scares don't pay off anything. When a jump scare works, you think about the best jump scares you've seen in horror movies and you just said, You're a horror guy.

Yeah. If you've seen the movie Wait Until Dark. Oh, no, I haven't. Oh, my gosh, Rihanna. It's so good. Okay, I'll peep. And there is a jump scare in that movie that is probably the best jump scare in the history of cinema. Awesome.

And part of what makes it work is that it's paying off the fear that has been building over the course of the film. It is a culminating scene where somebody's kind of jumping out of the darkness. And it's so, so scary. Here, Rihanna, the jump scares are literally. just like the movie just goes, right? Exactly. I don't enjoy those.

There's a difference between scary and startling. Yeah. And this movie is not interested in that difference. It just startles you in lieu of scaring you. Well, on the note of paying off,

there's a lot of things in this movie that don't pay off. They're like introduced and then never fully explored. I think the trailer and the general conceit of the movie brings up this festival, right?

Faz Fest. this Freddie Fasbear Street Festival that everyone in the town is obsessed with, that everybody dresses up and goes. And there's very minimal payoff. We don't really see much of that festival. It's like we know it's there, right? There's a scene where like one of the animatronics interacts at the festival, and then that's it.

Like we get nothing from that. And that was one of the more interesting things that like this movie was promising to offer. I think the horror similarly, right? It's like there's this character introduced in this movie called The Marionette, which I have gathered is pretty big in the lore, question mark. Not super familiar, but I've done some reading. I've read up on the Phanaff lore. It's a character, but the purpose of the character seems to be solely setting up five nights at Freddy's three. It really, this movie feels like an interstitial between two.

more interesting movies. Yeah, like nothing really happens. These characters are simply introduced, but not, there's no real conclusion, right, to any of their storylines. They kind of just exist. Character motivations are like not fully warranted. There's a scene where like Josh Hutcherson at the end of the movie tells one of the other characters, stay away. I don't want you in my life. And I was like, what? Like, that's kind of random. Right. There is a reason for it. Like, that character has kind of kept something from him. But that fact isn't that big reveal. Exactly.

Yeah. So it suddenly feels like there are a bunch of scenes in this film. And this is a famous kind of horror movie trope where characters are making bad decisions for inexplicable reasons in part to get them in a position to be murdered. And this film, what it feels like is lazy. It just feels like we need to get from point A to point B. And then there's kind of a lot of hand waving to get them there. And the marionette, yes, the marionette. Yes, the marionette is a big part of the games.

But the way it's kind of executed here, it's like, ah, yes, the famous children's character, the haunted spider monster. Right. It's so weird. That has no visual similarity with the marionette to the rest of the animatronics either. No. Like, it's very odd. This character that just suddenly appears and we're all supposed to take it at face value.

Like, in the prologue, I would say, the character shows up for the first time. And I was confused, you know? I hear people in my theater like, oh, no way. But like I'm sitting there. I'm like, what is this? You know, like, there's no like visual reference point in the Five Nights at Freddy's, like, iconography that it could relate to. So it's a weird character design at that. And it kind of loses some of the like, umph and power, you know, because it mostly just like, why was this character even designed?

Which is perhaps thinking too much into the, like, anima. But you still want to tether it to some kind of reality. And, Rihanna, you watch a lot of horror movies. I mean, horror movies are kind of designed to take some element of real life and twist it and kind of bring out the things about it that ping our neuroses, kind of ping our fears. And certainly, you know, the first film is really doing that kind of with missing children and kind of how tenuous childhood can be. And this just feels like it's checking a lot. of horror movie boxes of like the marionette comes in and it's just another haunted doll. Right. And that's different from having these kind of hulking animatronic robots that feel coded to childhood memories of Chuck Echee cheese animatronics kind of milling around clunkily. Those characters, such as they are characters, are tapping into childhood memories. And for me, the marionette comes in and that's not tapping into anything. And it's not tapping in to what's fun and lively in.

silly about the first movie where like you're taking this for me beloved childhood memory and making it terrifying. Totally. And I think the first movie with the main character, Mike, feels like he's responsible for his brother getting kidnapped when he was a kid. That is an interesting emotional hook. And it does ground the movie and Five Nights at Freddy's One is memorable, if nothing else, you know? And then there's scenes in that movie that like, I don't. particularly connect to or like even, but I remember them. Like I remember the scenes, the dream scenes with the missing kids. I remember the animatronics. I remember the toy cupcake chasing somebody through the hallway, you know, like these images that like stick with you, even though I didn't

like the movie. This movie doesn't really give any of those, right? I think like I like the movies a similar amount, but I don't think there's any memorable scenes from this movie that I will recall a year from now, even six months from now, you know? That's right. So there's two Freddie Fazbear pizzas in this movie. Right. They introduce a new location that has sat for decades. Exactly.

And they have this throwaway line that I can't stop thinking about that makes me laugh, where they're like, well, the other one, aka the one from the first movie, is just the franchisee. This is the real deal. And it's like, it's not memorable. You're kind of just confused. You're like, there's a second Freddie Fazbear pizza, ostensibly 10 minutes. from the first one that nobody has ever talked about.

And it has like a river, like a, like a lazy river in it for some reason? It was giving like, have you ever been to Casa Bonita in Denver? No. Oh my God. Massive restaurant with like cliff diver and magic shows and things like that. And I was like, oh, okay. Like they're doing kind of like Casa Bonita, right? Where there's like a river running through the restaurant.

But even then it's like it doesn't really deliver on that more than characters being. like, wow, there's a river. And then everybody inexplicably falling in the river. You know, like, just keeps toppling into the river. It doesn't really, again, like, it doesn't deliver on these promises that, like, they set up. You know, there's really no payoff. It's Five Nights of Freddy's 1.5. Yeah. All right. Well, we want to know what you think about Five Nights at Freddy's 2. Find us on Facebook at Facebook.com slash PCHH and on Letterboxed at letterboxed.com slash NPR pop culture. We'll have a link in our episode description.

Up next, what is making us happy this week? Now it's time for our favorite segment of this week and every week. What's making us happy this week? Rihanna Cruz, what's making you happy this week, buddy? So I was listening to L.A.NPR member station, KCRW, and I get a lot of music recommendations from Morning Becomes Eclectic, the Morning Show here. Yeah, great show. One of the songs that they were playing, I really tapped into.

It's from the band Gliders. It's off of the album Forever, which came out a couple weeks ago. And I think a lot of these late year releases kind of get swallowed by like the end of the year list deluge. And there's not really much bandwidth, frankly, to like pay them their due. But Chicago Trio, gliders, three people, kind of swampy rock, psychedelic rock. I've been really into the song Step In slash Tell Me About the Rabbit. It's eight minutes long. It's really good.

good. It kind of scratches the like, what if King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard was like paired back to just three people and kind of chugging. You know, it's a little bluesy. I take it a lot. So that's an album that I've been listening to a lot this week, forever by the Chicago Trio Gliders. Rihanna, I have to say, I host New Music Friday every week on NPR, and I have not heard that record. So I'm going to check it out. Sweet. Thank you for the heads up. Absolutely. What is making me happy uncharacteristically is a piece of news. You know? I'm curious.

That doesn't necessarily happen very much. It feels like the news can sort of be this deluge of trouble and division and conflict. And can't we come together as a nation and bond over one news story that makes everybody happy? Well, my friends, I have found that news story. I'm going to quote the AP headline, Raccoon goes on. drunken rampage in Virginia liquor store and passes out on bathroom floor. Oh, yeah. Other than a few broken liquor bottles at this Virginia liquor store, this is a victimless crime.

This is a story we can all get behind. Basically, a raccoon fell through a ceiling tile in a liquor store in Ashland, Virginia. It was kind of scurrying around trying to find something. Ended up smashing a bunch of bottles of scotch and whiskey and getting plowed. And the photo of this poor little buddy just flattened on the bathroom floor literally next to a toilet. Been there, brother. Been there, brother. Who among us?

Who among us at some point in their one wild and precious life has a moment where they drink too much and wind up, passed out like this sweet little buddy next to the toilet? Like everybody, I saw the headline. It was like, a click. I have to know more about the raccoon that got trashed at a liquor store. My immediate thought was, is the raccoon okay? My friends, the raccoon is okay. Amazing. My only complaint is I wish this had happened like two weeks ago so people could talk about it with their families at Thanksgiving.

So true. And have something to agree on in this desolate world. And that story, the raccoon getting drunk, is more compelling to bring it back around than five. Knights of Freddy's too. Oh, you just had to bring us down, didn't you? If you have not heard about the drunk raccoon, do yourself a favor. Just Google the words, drunk raccoon. You'll find it. Awesome. That is what is making me happy this week. If you want links for what we recommended, for example, stories about drunk raccoons, plus more recommendations, sign up for our newsletter at npr.org slash pop culture newsletter. That brings us to the end of our show. Rihanna Cruz,

thank you so much for being here. Always a pleasure. Thank you for having me, Stephen. This episode was produced by Liz Metzker, Kayla Latimore, Mike Katzif, and edited by our showrunner Jessica Reedy. Hello, Come In, provides our theme music. Thanks for listening to Pop Culture Happy Hour from NPR. I'm Stephen Thompson, and we will see you all next week.