Horror, a Downton parody, and Sondheim on screen — in theaters this weekend

Three drastically different movies are in theaters this weekend: a sequel to the video-game-to-horror-movie adaptation Five Nights at Freddy’s; a parody of gilded age sagas like Downton Abbey; and an intimate Stephen Sondheim musical, captured on camera during its Broadway run.

They join box office hit Zootopia 2, a Knives Out sequel, Wicked: For Good and more in theaters. (Here’s what came out last week, and the week before.)

Five Nights at Freddy’s 2

In theaters

The 2023 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 Chuck E. Cheese. In the games it’s based on, and in the first movie, our protagonist, Mike Schmidt (Josh Hutcherson), a down on his luck security guard, has to survive nights spent in a haunted children’s restaurant called Freddy Fazbear’s Pizza. The villains, as you might imagine, are murderous animatronic robots.

The first movie introduced us to the serial killer who helped birth them, and the serial killer’s daughter, a policewoman played by Elizabeth Lail. And it gave us a fair bit of lore about missing and murdered children. Two years later, a sequel has all those creepy animatronics come blinking ominously back to life in a movie that takes us back to Freddy Fazbear’s Pizza — and beyond. 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 its spooky setting. And it introduces a few new characters, including one so obviously doomed, he might as well be wearing a giant bullseye. — Stephen Thompson

Fackham Hall

In theaters

What Naked Gun did for police procedurals, and Austin Powers did for James Bond, this amiably featherweight parody aims to do for gilded-age sagas like Downton Abbey. An aristocratic family that’s despaired of ever unloading its spinster daughter (“she’s 23, a dried-up husk of a woman”) hires a con man/pickpocket as its new hall boy and romance ensues, along with several hundred gags. Also murder, which brings a Hercule Poirot-style inspector into the mix (introduced in an extended “Who’s on First” routine). Pratfalls and puns (a pastor is done in almost entirely by punctuation) are accompanied by sight gags (a garment shop called “Tailor Swift”) and character comedy played straight by actors sharp enough to populate a Gosford Park remake. J.R.R. Tolkien even shows up as a houseguest, scribbling notes to himself in Orkish. With production values high and music lush, it’ll be a sweet watch for anyone game to overlook a joke that misfires, knowing another one’ll be along in a few seconds. — Bob Mondello

Merrily We Roll Along 

In theaters

Stephen Sondheim’s musical-that-goes-backwards was a smash on Broadway in 2023. It starred erstwhile Harry Potter Daniel Radcliffe, Glee‘s Jonathan Groff, and All Rise’s Lindsay Mendez, played to standing-room crowds, and commanded ticket prices upwards of $900 in its final weeks. In the summer of 2024, right after its triumph at the Tony Awards, where it won best musical revival, several performances were filmed live at New York City’s Hudson Theater, and edited into the smart, intimate film that you can now catch for the price of a movie ticket.

The story takes three best friends — composer Franklin (Groff), playwright Charley (Radcliffe) and novelist Mary (Mendez) – from the dissolution of their friendship in 1976 (it goes backwards, remember) to the dewy-eyed kids they were on the roof of their apartment building on the night Sputnik passed overhead in 1957. Which is to say, this show about creative types learning about life and showbiz gets happier (and more bittersweet) as it progresses.

That proved confusing for audiences in 1981, when the first production of Merrily premiered to dismissive reviews, but the creative team fixed the problems in various revivals, and this one is as assured as any smash. The central performances, electrifying on stage, remain pretty stunning, with the bonus that you can see tiny gestures, worried looks and a tear staining a cheek more clearly than someone in a front row orchestra seat could at the Hudson. Radcliffe, who grew up on film sets, capitalizes on the camera’s intimacy more than his co-stars, but they’re all terrific. Yes, it feels stagey — you were expecting realism from a musical? — but the score is breathtaking, the lyrics scintillating, the emotions true, and as a Sondheim lyric has it, “that’s the sound of a hit.” — Bob Mondello