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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 Chucky 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 2 is freelance music and culture journalist Rihanna Cruz.

Hey, Rihanna.

Hey, Steven. 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 Freddie

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.

...