Five Nights at Freddy’s Part 2 might not be a Christmas movie, but it’s absolutely the anti-Christmas movie for anyone trying to dodge holiday fluff right now.
And dodge it they did. The fanbase showed up hard and the movie unseated Zootopia 2, pulling in around $63 million domestic and over $100 million worldwide on opening. That’s a lot more than many people expected it to do heading into the post-Thanksgiving, pre-Christmas window. This movie is hot right now in that weird in-between space where people are kind of done with turkeys but not quite ready for carols.
Domestically, that’s the second-biggest horror opening of the year for Blumhouse–Atomic Monster, after The Conjuring: Last Rites at $84 million. Yesterday’s numbers were solid too, with a drop of about 33%, which is actually better than the 39% drop the first Five Nights at Freddy’s movie took. It’s always an open question whether a film like this can keep that kind of momentum going, but at least for this weekend, it has absolutely blown past a lot of expectations—and even outpaced its own predecessor.
So, Merry Christmas to Blumhouse and the whole gang at Freddy Fazbear’s.
If holiday joy isn’t your thing this year, there’s always a killer animatronic waiting for you in the dark.
Let’s talk about Rockin’ Richie. If you were one of the folks who followed him on TikTok, you know who I mean. And if not, let me fill you in a bit. Rockin’ Richie wasn’t some guy who set out to be an influencer. He ended up in that role because he was dealing with stage 4 colon cancer and decided to share his journey, his choices, and his struggles with the world. And yeah, a lot of people followed along.
There was controversy wit this social media feed.. Richie talked about alternative treatments.. stuff that wasn’t the usual medical route. He was trying a mix of diet changes, water cleanses, and homeopathic approaches that didn’t have the backing of mainstream medicine. And when he talked about putting GoFundMe money into a trust fund for his daughter, some people got really suspicious. They started accusing him of faking the whole thing just to get money, which was tough to watch unfold.
But here’s the thing, Richie was a real person going through a brutal journey. And yes, it was his body, his choice. He decided to fight cancer his way, even if a lot of people, including doctors and nurses, might have wished he’d gone a more traditional route.
We all sort of went on that experimental path with him by watching his updates. He even did a Livestream a couple of months ago where he went to a doctor in real time, hoping to hear good news that his tumor had shrunk from these alternative treatments. Instead, he got the devastating news that the tumor had grown. It was heartbreaking for everyone watching, but Richie stuck to his chosen path.
On that note, there is also some commentary on us as people who followed him. He wanted to eventually come up with his own book and YouTube channel to talk about how he beat cancer. The doctors of course told him he wouldn’t, and he didn’t. But in the common threads on social media many people who supported him continued supporting his desire to do alternative treatments, which in hindsight perhaps was a seemingly rotten thing to do. He just needed medicine but instead many in his fan base, loyal to the end, was encouraging him to avoid that. Just because it’s social media, doesn’t mean it’s all fake…
Maybe some people think that was foolish, and maybe others respect it as his personal choice. Either way, he fought his fight the way he wanted to, in the end.
Now he’s at peace.. whatever peace means, wherever we go after this life. And I bet deep down, even the people who disagreed with his treatment goals were probably rooting for him, because cancer is something we all wish we could see beaten for good.
So, may Rockin’ Richie rest in peace. We might not all agree on the path he took, but we can respect that he chose to share his journey and fought as hard as he could.
People always say Blair Witch kicked things off, and sure, it definitely lit the fuse. But before that, we had Faces of Death being passed around like contraband in the ’90s. For better or worse, that was the “original” shared footage.. VHS tapes traded among teenagers who half-assumed it was all staged. Little did we realize there was some real footage mixed in with the fake.
Disturbing when you think about it, right?
Now we’ve moved from VHS to online, and the style has followed. Man Finds Tape is coming to theaters and digital platforms from Magnet Releasing and stars William Magnuson as Lucas, the operator of a YouTube channel called “Man Finds Tape.” The movie basically examines the way we share this stuff as a society, and how we consume found footage, viral clips, and disturbing imagery… it wraps that idea in an eerie mystery told through different formats.
And honestly, that’s our real life now. We’re constantly finding things, posting them, and watching social media platforms race to either boost them or pull them down. As this is written, just last night in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, a bus ran over a person, and yes, there was footage online, on a pretty big social site. The victim was thankfully blurred out, but the comments underneath were less than appealing, to put it mildly. So it’s not just “man finds tape” anymore; it’s everyone live-streaming horrors in real time.
When something awful happens, our instinct now is to search. We look up the footage, the location, the angles, the aftermath. We want to know everything. I’m not sure what that says about us, but it’s definitely something horror is starting to chew on.
Peter Hall told Fangoria there are a lot of rabbit holes on the internet, and they wanted to tell a story about someone exploring one of those viral rabbit holes. Paul Gandersman pointed out that for a long time, if you saw bizarre footage, you needed proof that it was real. Now it’s flipped: people automatically assume it’s fake, and you have to prove that it actually happened.
With AI and all the new tools out there, that tracks. We’re much less willing to accept anything at face value. Show September 11th footage to some kids today with no context, and the first reaction might honestly be, “Is that AI?”
The film itself sounds pretty interesting. The filmmakers said they worked from a fairly tight script, but there was room for improvisation. They gave the actors permission to find new dialogue or fresh moments in a scene, as long as what they were doing stayed within the structure of the movie. That’s actually pretty cool.. improv in a found-footage style can make the performances feel more natural, and it can open doors to character beats you’d never get in a locked-down script.
The movie also leans heavily into religion. The filmmakers grew up around Catholicism, with some Judaism mixed in, and there’s a character who plays a reverend who actually grew up in an evangelical community in real life. That kind of background colors the whole atmosphere of the film and religious imagery mixed with found footage and internet horror is fertile ground.
From the trailer alone, some of the imagery looks like it might be difficult for certain viewers. It leans into that “too real” feeling, where the production value is working against your comfort level by mimicking reality a little too closely. Viewer discretion is obviously advised. But it’s always interesting when horror goes beyond jump scares and actually comments on culture itself.
We have said before: horror is at its best when it digs deep into the moment we’re living in—our politics, our tech, our habits, and holds up a warped mirror. It lets the monster tell us something about ourselves.
So in Man Finds Tape, who’s the monster? Whatever’s lurking on the recordings… or the people who keep hitting play?
