It's been four years since Finney (Mason Thomas) killed notorious child killer The Grabber (Ethan Hawke) and escaped from his basement dungeon. While he and his sister Gwen (Madeleine McGrew) have spent the intervening years building a new life, it seems that their past - including The Grabber's vengeful spirit - has come calling once again, and it's up to them to solve a new mystery and make sure that the dead stay that way in Scott Derrickson's Black Phone 2.
Back in 2021 writer/director Scott Derrickson and co-writer C. Robert Cargill presented a new horror vision to the world in The Black Phone. The Sinister pair had stepped away from the MCU after the success of Doctor Strange and this new feature was a relatively small potatoes indie feature with modest ambitions. Thanks to a novel script and a limited core cast giving great performances, the film was a surprise success.
The Black Phone skated the line between standard slasher and supernatural horror, its sequel has fully jumped into the deep end on the latter. Though Finney and Gwen are moving forward with their lives, the young girl’s clairvoyant dreams beckon her to a defunct summer camp in the woods, where a lonely phone booth seems to be the place where she can connect with her long dead mother.
Desperate to figure out what is going on, the siblings – along with Gwen’s new love interest Ernesto (Miguel Mora) – trek out to the camp to see what is going on. Once they arrive, things immediately get terrifying, with Gwen psychic dreams getting increasingly violent and visions of three dead young boys haunting her, looking for answers of their own.
Where Finney was the protagonist of the first film, the sequel focuses firmly on Gwen and her psychic abilities as the thrust for the main narrative, which involves The Grabber’s origin and those three dead boys. Though there is plenty of running around and a couple of pretty interestingly staged action sequences, the film mostly eschews the slasher model for gory nightmares.
Apart from the subgenre switch, Black Phone 2 also takes big swings stylistically, and their success will largely depend on the viewer. Most of the film looks pretty standard, if perhaps oppressively dark is some of the outdoor night scenes, however, as we spend more and more time in Gwen’s dreams, the visual switch to hazy, 8mm style imagery. The action within these moments feels hazier, almost like we’re watching a snuff film, it’s an interesting choice, but it feels overused here as the dream sequences sometimes overstay their welcome and it feels as though we are drifting into Skinamarink territory.
Meanwhile, back in the real world, these long-abandoned camp cabins are drenched in giallo style red lighting for no apparent reason. It’s cool to look at, but it doesn’t make a lot of sense. There are a number of plot and production elements that strain credulity in Black Phone 2, most of which seem to be a result of the commitment to style.
Derrickson and Cargill use Black Phone 2 as a way to explore the lingering effects of Finney’s trauma along with the family’s survivor’s guilt over the loss of their mother. It’s often successful in evoking those elements, however, it is also incredibly over-indulgent and excessively derivative to the point that many times during the film I kind of wished I was watching the films to which it pays tribute.
Influences here are writ large, with Gwen dream battles obviously bringing to mind the A Nightmare on Elm Street films and the camp location bringing Friday the 13th and its occasionally forays into psychic abilities into the mix. The references here are unsubtle and abundant, almost to the point where it feels like there’s not much else going on. When the film does try something new, it sometimes reads as silly – like the ice-skating ghost Grabber (not a spoiler, it’s in the trailer) – and it doesn’t jive with the film’s otherwise super serious tone.
Black Phone 2 is a jumble of ideas and references that make it feel like the film lacks a sense of purpose other than to capitalize on its predecessor’s success by extending The Black Phone IP. In these days where everything is a sequel or a remake, at least the filmmakers tried something new with the latest iteration of these characters, however, this time the tone just feels uneven and the film is pushing in too many different directions at once. Maybe The Black Phone was fine as a one off, because half way through this sequel I was ready to hang up.