With movies like Sinners, Weapons, and 28 Years Later, 2025 was a big year for horror, but critics and audiences didn’t always see eye-to-eye. Several films that generated some chilling scares on the big screen with viewers didn’t receive the same critical consensus. And now a 2025 horror movie that achieved a record-breaking discrepancy between critic and audience scores on Rotten Tomatoes just made its streaming debut on Peacock, and it just may be a future cult classic.
Five Night’s at Freddy’s 2 is streaming for the first time since it hit theaters in December 2025. The movie, a sequel to the 2023 hit based on Scott Cawthon’s video game series about possessed, murderous animatronics at a defunct 1980s family entertainment center, joined the NBCUniversal streamer on April 3rd, and it holds an unusual record. The movie surpassed the stark critic divide of the original and debuted with 13% Tomatometer and 88% Popcornmeter scores, a 75% device that made it he film with the biggest critic-audience divide on the site. Those numbers have since shifted slightly, the film now holding a 16% Tomatometer score against a high 83% Popcornmeter rating.
Five Nights at Freddy’s 2 Divided Critics and Audiences
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Five Nights at Freddy’s 2’s critic and audience divide couldn’t have been any greater. Described by The Associated Press’ Mark Kennedy as an “incoherent mess” and “nothing more than a cynical cash grab” by Discussing Film’s Tyler Taing, critics largely saw the movie as a lifeless sequel that relied too heavily on lore for fans and delivered minimal scares, subpar acting, and a confusing script. General audiences, meanwhile, overwhelmingly loved the movie, dubbing it “better than the first” and “way too good.” Most appreciated the scarier, more lore-heavy script and the fact that it was more faithful to the games than the first. That fan-forward approach that ignored critical reception and delivered exactly what fans want is exactly why the movie is poised to become a cult classic, not to mention the fact that it’s a great gateway horror film that appeals to audiences of all ages.
While the movie failed to win much love for critics, that didn’t stop it from becoming a massive hit. The high audience rating put it above even other highly praised 2025 horror flicks like The Conjuring: Last Rites and Good Boy, and that doesn’t even touch the surface when it comes to how well it performed at the box office. Although the movie didn’t beat the original’s massive $130 million opening weekend, it still drew audiences in droves to earn a $110 million global opening ($64 million domestic, $46 million global). Those numbers meant Five Nights at Freddy’s 2 secured the biggest post-Thanksgiving opening weekend ever, the biggest December horror opening, and the largest PG-13 horror opening of 2025, among numerous other records, proving the franchise’s success on the big screen.
What’s New on Peacock?
April is a great month for streaming on Prime Video. The platform has already grown its streaming options with the arrival of dozens of films, including The 40-Year-Old Virgin, Dead Poets Society, and Interstellar. Even more can’t-miss titles are set to arrive later in April, including Nosferatu on April 21st and the original Five Nights At Freddy’s on April 26th.
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