Nearly three years ago, we published our review of Blumhouse’s first Five Nights at Freddy’s film ahead of the Halloween season. As someone who got into the franchise in its infancy, I was looking forward to seeing how they would scale up for the second film. After all, the second game in the series itself was one I remember improving upon and expanding on almost every concept explored in the first game, a feat I’d consider the sequel a better game overall for. Going into the sequel of the film adaptation, I was really hoping it would be sized up in all the best ways in that regard, right down to ending on my favorite song The Living Tombstone has produced of the franchise, It’s Been So Long.
At least they got that last one right.
As a game, Five Nights at Freddy’s 2 puts all the control at the player’s fingertips to man their station and put up a fight against an overwhelming amount of new and old faces. The new mechanics introduced are genius in how they both add strategy and aid in the story’s first attempt at some serious worldbuilding. As a movie, Five Nights at Freddy’s 2 feels multiple steps back from its predecessor, which is already a bad sign since, as stated in our original review’s title, Five Nights at Freddy’s isn’t perfect itself. Though, we also mentioned in the title that it’s okay it’s not perfect. Every franchise (even specifically video game adaptation franchise) has some growing pains it and its audience need to bear before hitting the ground running.
So can someone please explain why it feels like nothing happens in this film? Be warned we’re getting into spoiler territory with this review. I’m sorry, I try to keep these reviews mostly free of spoilers, but I need to fully rip into this one because it’s just so baffling to me.
Michael Afton (Freddy Carter) being separated as a character from Mike Schmidt (Josh Hutcherson) is a fine change. That doesn’t bother me so much as his motivations are just outright stated with no definitive reasoning. Was there any conditioning or psychological torture that led him to be so accepting and willing to carry William Afton’s (Matthew Lillard) legacy on? Are we just supposed to accept Vanessa’s (Elizabeth Lail) evil brother she never mentioned has been waiting this whole time for more people to come to the original abandoned flagship location? I know that sentence just went on and on horrendously, but that’s seriously the ACTUAL justification we’re fed and meant to accept.
Nothing in this movie feels like it matters. The toy animatronics are tearing up the whole neighborhood targeting childrens’ families, and Vanessa is still the only officer on the scene? With how much the adults of the town seem to condemn Fazfest, heightened police activity should be a given. Oh, sorry I forgot the adults in this movie are useless and don’t do anything. Mike doesn’t take what Abby (Piper Rubio) says seriously, and even the opening scene with the marionette features a million unhelpful adults who won’t take Charlotte (Audrey Lynn-Marie) seriously. This movie feels like it’s actively AGAINST progressing the plot in any satisfying way. Every beat of the antagonists’ plot continues on without a hitch until the last act where Mike rushes through the FNAF 2 gameplay loop and rushes back to his house to fight the toy animatronics and Michael Afton with Vanessa. And then the classic animatronics from the first film/game show up to defend the Schmidt family (from the “franchise location” as they call it in this film) before they shut down and the childrens’ spirits… go to heaven or something? It felt like a hamfisted attempt at resolving an unfinished business storyline that either didn’t fully develop or I didn’t care about at all.
Letting Scott Cawthon (the creator of the game series) in the writer’s room is something I hope to myself isn’t the core problem with this film series, but the signs are just horrible. He has such a specific flavor of making-this-up-as-we-go that plagues specifically his work in the franchise that no one else can replicate. Good for him still having creative control, but I just don’t think he knows how to write a compelling narrative for the big screen at all. I still want to see a Five Nights at Freddy’s 3, but Scott either needs to step his game up next time, or collect his paycheck and get out now.
Five Nights at Freddy’s 2 is now playing in theaters, and is available for purchase/rental on digital platforms.
Viewers who tuned into The Game Awards 2025 this past Thursday were treated to an exclusive preview of the Street Fighter film adaptation, directed by Kitao Sakurai and set to release October 16th of 2026. Though following the premiere, the audience could never have anticipated what happened next. One by one, the announcer called the majority of the cast onstage accompanied by their respective characters’ voice clips from the original games.
As someone who’s watched the Game Awards for years, I’ve never seen any reveal go quite like this. The event, hosted by Geoff Keighley, often calls in surprise celebrity guests to surprise fans—last year Harrison Ford made a memorable appearance joining Troy Baker onstage as the two Indiana Jones actors stood side-by-side for the first time. But this? Never before did a near-full cast of their work storm the stage to present an award following their long-awaited first look. A few names were omitted, however; I was personally a bit bummed seeing Eric André (who portrays Don Sauvage) skipped the ensemble appearance. The energy he brings to any live event fills the room, whether through his spontaneity or other such chaos, and I felt he would be a perfect fit for the Game Awards stage. Kitao Sakurai, the director of the film, even directed Bad Trip starring the Adult Swim talk show host, and even served as director on said Adult Swim show.
Even still, it felt like the cast appearance had something (someone?) for everyone. One of my friends was overjoyed to see Cody Rhodes and Roman Reigns together on the stage, who play Guile and Akuma respectively. The film’s casting feels really solid for the most part, with even some of the unconventional picks firing on all cylinders in terms of how they hold themselves in the trailer and how they appear relative to their game counterparts.
After throwing some shade at the cast of the upcoming Mortal Kombat II, the cast would go on to present the award for Best Ongoing Game to Hello Games’ No Man’s Sky (2016), which has continued releasing multiple updates every year to build its world, the most recent one being Breach from October of 2025.
Street Fighter is one of the earliest names in gaming to have gotten a film adaptation, with animated and live-action features both releasing in 1994. However, this new crack at the IP started with the Philippou brothers of RackaRacka on YouTube, though more recently the two have directed Talk To Me and Bring Her Back for A24. Incidentally, the two turned down the direction opportunity in order to work on the latter. Kitao Sakurai was announced as the new director in February of 2025, and looking at his work directing The Eric Andre Show, in which things break and people get hurt every other minute, it’s safe to say he’s a great pick for a combat-focused film like Street Fighter seems to be.
Kitao Sakurai’s Street Fighter will be released in theaters by Paramount Pictures on October 16th, 2026.
Any viewer of late-night adult animation is familiar with the boom in popularity coming from Adult Swim’s Smiling Friends, a joint effort between creators Michael Cusack and Zach Hadel. The series feels like it has both a cult fanbase and a wider appeal at the same time, evident through at least one clip from the previous Sunday’s episode going viral on Twitter.
“The Glep Ep” wrapped the third season this past Sunday, exploring the origins of the titular “prop character” as he’s often been dubbed by Cusack and Hadel. The episode actually goes in-depth about the history of Smiling Friends as a company and how Glep played a foundational role in its creation. The episode explores a few dark and heartfelt moments while keeping up the iconic silly, sudden tone the show has been known for since its pilot. Fans expected as much, since Adult Swim refused to share much about the episode aside from the same two clips from its intro.
The unfortunate news is that with the eighth episode, the show seems to have run its course as it has for the previous two seasons. However, eagle-eyed fans spotted a listing on the Warner TV Germany website that indicated this wasn’t the last we’d be hearing of the critters this season.
The two episodes, “Friend Bot (version 12589218731809213528796879521)” and “Charlie’s Uncle Dies and Doesn’t Come Back”, don’t seem to have any release information beyond their synopses and probable 11-minute runtimes. The former did not air a preview following “The Glep Ep” as all previous episodes of the season had, which leads us to think Adult Swim’s decision to give the season a full 10 episodes may have come later in the season’s production. This would mean these episodes may not premiere until sometime in 2026, which would give fans of Smiling Friends some more noshings while waiting for the already greenlit fourth and fifth seasons of the show.
Crew members on the show have implied or outright confirmed this ten-episode order, though the creators themselves have remained silent. It’s fair to say the remaining two episodes are in fact real, but until there’s further word on their release, we’ll just have to keep our eye on Pim and Charlie. Just hope it’s not a big, disembodied one brought about by Mr. Boss’ ex-wife.
The third season of Smiling Friends is now streaming on HBO Max.
In 2021, Glenn Holsten’s Hell or High Seas was released by our parent company, Invincible Entertainment. This powerful story follows veteran Taylor Grieger and the film’s writer Stephen O’Shea on a personal journey of self-reflection, sailing the waters of Cape Horn in Chile. As the waves thrash the ship night and day, both Taylor and Stephen find themselves opening up to the audience about what this trip and documentary mean to them.
We covered this film twice before on Don’t Tell, once in 2021 upon news of its distribution and again the following year covering the film’s contents. For Veterans Day this year, we felt it appropriate to boost the film once more. Whether viewed by another war veteran or even someone not very knowledgeable on its topics, the film covers a lot of ground that left the audience emotional and captivated following its premiere screening.
Hell or High Seas is now streaming on our sister site, Galxy.tv. If you’re in search of more Veterans Day flicks this Tuesday, please make sure to check out our Veterans Day Collection list!
And all I got was this stupid photo.
When Universal Studios Orlando announced their lineup for their 2025 Halloween Horror Nights haunted houses, there seemed to be something for everyone. Classics like the Jason Universe saw massive positive reception, as well as new age cult classics like the Terrifier series. For primarily younger horror demographics, however, one name immediately stuck out like a sore thumb: Five Nights at Freddy’s. This haunted house would allow parkgoers and fans alike to step inside the world of the video game (though, this and the Fallout haunted house were mainly inspired by their adaptations) and see its elements up close in person for the first time. Fully moving animatronics on the main stage, the security office, the kitchen, and maybe even the man behind the slaughter himself. Anyone who was there in the series’ early days, especially little kids, had the same collective thought back in the day: it would be so cool to go to a real-life version of this place. You know, preferably without the haunted animatronics and risk of being shoved into a springlocked Freddy Fazbear suit, but you get the gist. This was quite literally a dream come true for so many fans, young and old. So when I found out I’d be going to Universal Studios Orlando right in the nick of time, I knew I couldn’t pass up this opportunity.
We arrived at the city walk at around 4:30 from our shuttle (Epic Universe is great, by the way. Definitely go there.) and stopped for some dinner beforehand. Picking whatever the first place we saw was, we ended up at The Cowfish, a strange fusion restaurant combining sushi and burgers in their signature dish dubbed the “burgushi”. None of this plays into the Five Nights at Freddy’s part of this story, but it’s important to me that you know this. Across from the restaurant was one of Universal Studios Orlando’s many stores, where they had a Freddy Fazbear decal right in the window alongside plushies of the main four inside. They meant business, and knew exactly what many young people were there for.
Advancing to the haunted houses through the Halloween Horror Nights gates leading to the main park, we followed the signs leading us to the haunted houses. The line for the Five Nights at Freddy’s haunted house was held in what I assumed was the former sound stage of many Universal productions. As it turns out, the whole of Universal Studios Orlando’s studio lot theming is actually ripped from Universal Studios Hollywood, in which parkgoers can go on a tour of their real studio lots. So many iconic films were produced at that location in those very sound stages, and we were being held in a crowded replica full of tired, overheated, and possibly drunken Five Nights at Freddy’s fans.
After about an hour of standing around and slightly moving forward, we exited the sound stage in the final lane of its crowded line. Expecting to have been met with an entrance to the fictional 80’s entertainment center, we were instead shocked to find… another line. This one did not appear nearly as packed as the sound stage line, though not for lack of trying. This line stretched out and wrapped around multiple other sound stages outside the one we had just come from, and the sweaty Florida heat almost made this wait harder to bear. It took nearly ANOTHER hour before we found ourselves in the final lane of what we hoped was, dear God, the final line. Thankfully, we could see the residual glow of the neon lights through the back entrance we were being fed into. I hoped that in spite of the near two hours we waited in that sweaty, cramped, fatigued line that maybe, just MAYBE this haunted house would have been worth it. And before us, there it suddenly was.
This was the only photo I could capture before they threatened to kick me out. We walked through the entrance, past the animatronics (singing “Talking In Your Sleep” by The Romantics like in the film), through the main office, past the kitchen, being jumpscared all the way throughout.
And then, it was done.
We were disappointed to say the least. I mean, all that waiting for THAT? We definitely set our expectations too high. I feel like any Halloween Horror Nights veteran would have known what to expect from the haunted houses at this point, but to someone new, ESPECIALLY following such a long line, it just felt a lot cheaper and quicker than we had expected. Then again, that’s kind of the fun of the franchise even from just the first game. My mind keeps going back and forth on if this was a waste of time or exactly what it needed to be, but to be honest, I’m overthinking this. It’s kind of in a Five Nights at Freddy’s fan’s nature to sweat the little details and go absolutely crazy trying to figure things out, and I’m not gonna be that guy. I’m not even going to complain about a lack of Golden Freddy representation—though the guy who will is probably out there somewhere, waiting with bated breath for you to ask him. In any case, it was both really cool to see one of my childhood fantasies finally realized in a material sense with the Five Nights at Freddy’s haunted house at Universal Studios Orlando, and something I’ll probably never go to again.
If you want to explore a haunted house of your own while at home this Halloween, come check out our title selection on our sister site Galxy.tv! Live in the moment with the found footage film 8213: Gacy House, as well as the chilling 100 Ghost Street: The Return of Richard Speck. Happy Halloween, everyone!
In a departure from our usual cinema-focused coverage, we occasionally take a look at gaming as a part of general entertainment news. Sometimes the two go hand in hand, with blockbuster adaptations like Sonic the Hedgehog 3 and A Minecraft Movie gaining news articles and reviews on this site in the past year, as well as gaming-adjacent general articles. Even the writer of our review of The Fantastic Four: First Steps gave a nod to Videocult’s Rain World in his comparisons, an indie game focused on exploring a desolate, fractured dark world left behind by calamity.
As far as dark, desolate, post-apocalyptic indies go, Team Cherry’s Hollow Knight is unquestionably one of the crown jewels. While the Kickstarter’s stretch goals didn’t quite go all the way as some other crowdfunded indies have, the Australian team of three made a meal out of their budget and then some, going on to sell over 15 million copies as one of the most successful indie releases of all time. And today, after over 7 years of development, the game’s sequel Hollow Knight: Silksong released on Steam. Have we gotten the chance to play yet?
To tell the truth, most players are still waiting.
Due to the incredibly high amount of buzz surrounding the game’s release, it’s important to understand just how many people were waiting on Silksong worldwide. In its pre-release phase, the game was wishlisted by upwards of five million users on the Steam platform, beating out other indie releases like Subnautica 2, AAA releases like Borderlands 4, and even Valve’s (the company who owns Steam) very own upcoming shooter, Deadlock. Needless to say, the overwhelming amount of people waiting in line for the next entry in the Hollow Knight series was impossible for any one server to handle, causing the Steam backend to return an error message upon continuing to purchase.
This is not limited to the PC storefront—a report from Eurogamer as well as numerous consumer tweets confirm that Xbox, PlayStation, and Nintendo eShop servers all crashed upon Silksong‘s release. Gamers from all over the world, no matter what platform, have all united today to support a grand journey eight years in the making, and those unaware will soon know. The current workaround some have figured out is purchasing a game key through Humble Bundle, activating the code through Steam after the fact and bypassing the checkout backend. Regardless, Hollow Knight fans worldwide will be able to purchase and play the game on the platform of their choice once the server errors with each are ironed out, possibly in the next few hours. We’ll see you in Pharloom!
Hollow Knight: Silksong is now available on PlayStation, Xbox, and Nintendo Switch systems, as well as Xbox Game Pass and Steam.
Get Some Strange!
