Black Phone 2 Review: This Horror Sequel Skates on Very Thin Ice
Scott Derrickson's follow-up to his 2021 feature is a "Nightmare" rip-off
This post is free but it’s worth it to become a paid member of The Film Maven community! Paid subscribers are the backbone of The Film Maven who support independent journalism, as well as female- and disabled-created content. Paid Film Mavens get access to two-three exclusive articles a week including access to my series The Trade and Popcorn Disabilities, as well as the ability to chat with me on The Film Maven's Discord server.
Don't want to commit to a subscription? Leave a tip to show you enjoy what you're reading.
Enjoy what you’re reading? Share it with friends. Help us get to 1,000 subscribers by the end of 2025 and I’ll do a full written and video review of Francis Ford Coppola’s Megalopolis.
Read more about the history of disability in film by pre-ordering my upcoming book, Popcorn Disabilities: The Highs and Lows of Disabled Representation in the Movies. I not only expand on what you’re reading here, but examine the stereotypes, tropes, and the good, bad (and really ugly) of disabled movies. Preorder the book by clicking this link! Send me proof of your preorder and I’ll give you a paid subscription to The Film Maven for one year!
The 2021 horror film The Black Phone, at the time, came off as well thanks to its Stephen King vibes--no surprise, considering the short story was written by King's son, Joe Hill--and child kidnapper storyline. You certainly can't call out screenwriters C. Robert Cargill and Scott Derrickson for repeating what worked then because the sequel, Black Phone 2, only takes the characters and puts them into a totally different feature that possesses little of the scares or interest as the first go-round.
An homage to Nightmare on Elm Street so blatant as to be an outright rip-off, Black Phone 2 takes elements that should work, but ends up losing the beat with a sluggish story and a wafer thin premise.
Now teenagers, Finn and Gwen (Mason Thames and Madeleine McGraw, respectively) struggle to move on after their interactions with The Grabber (Ethan Hawke). But Gwen has continued to have violent dreams, about her dead mother and a group of missing boys, that lead her up to a remote Christian youth camp in the Colorado Rockies. Trapped by a massive blizzard, Gwen and Finn must band together with those at the camp to find the missing boys and do battle with the Grabber one final time, this time in the dream world.
The film's opening in 1957 sets the tone as we meet a young woman, revealed to be Gwen and Finn's deceased mother, having a conversation on an eponymous black phone, actually a phone booth randomly placed near a lake in one of several unintentionally hilarious moments. From there it's an immediate jump to 1982, reintroducing us to our leads, now young adults. Finn struggles with PTSD about his childhood kidnapping and is content to numb himself out with pot while Gwen cries and screams a lot even when she isn't having Cassandra-esque insights into murder and child death.
The first fifty minutes of Black Phone 2 runs so slow that when Gwen tells Finn to go with her to Alpine Lake because he needs a job it's as if the characters are reminding everyone they need to get off their ass and do something. This is because the movie wraps itself in talk therapy, which really is just Gwen telling Finn he needs to talk about his trauma and Finn telling her he's fine. Occasionally, a random phone will ring and Finn will tell the dead person on the line he's out of that game. And then Gwen will have a dream. The repetition of this sequence of events runs cold quick because of how rote it becomes.
Once Gwen and Finn arrive, complete with friend/boyfriend material Ernesto (Miguel Mora) in tow, the movie becomes a standard missing persons thriller, with the trio and the camp members looking for the dead boys to release their souls and stop the Grabber. But even that is sidetracked by the need to continually inject Gwen's dream walking. A lone clue will eventually pop up, but it comes after several minutes of Gwen walking around, reacting, and sometimes fighting. All of this is shot in a grainy, 8mm style, so it's painful to look at even before people start getting hacked up. And, like Freddy Krueger showed us, if you die in the dream you die for real so everyone must band together to...keep Gwen from falling asleep.
This is McGraw's film. She's not only the one propelling events but is also the only one given personality. She's fine, but the role requires her to be so emotionally overwrought as to veer on manic. Every emotion is a Big Moment, and yet when she's given exposition or a big speech it's flat and monotone. Thames is good, but his Finn is given little to do other than be the white knight saving his sister. His main breakthrough comes too late and is acted as a relatively minor moment for him. The other cast members, including Demian Bichir as the kind-hearted camp owner, are all one-note. Bichir, though, does understand the assignment and is able to turn anything into either a source for comedy or uniting the troops.
The introduction of the Grabber to this world feels so ancillary, as if the screenwriting team wanted to do an original movie and were forced to add him in and call this a sequel. Where Hawke and the character were so haunting and dynamic in the first movie, now the Grabber is just another bland supernatural entity meant to scare and torture you. Sadly, there's no scares and the torture is just....there. But, hey, at least you get to see the Grabber ice skate. Who didn't want to see that? (I'd be hard pressed to tell you whether Hawke does anything in this other than provide his voice.)
There's little to Black Phone 2 to recommend it. At nearly two hours the pacing kills any sense of momentum and the story boils down to everyone wandering in the snow looking for dead bodies. The cast is fine, but there's no meat to their characters and their performances are reflective of that. The Grabber should have stayed one and done.
Grade: D
Black Phone 2 is in theaters Friday.
Are you a fan of the Black Phone? Let me know in the comments.
The Film Maven is seeking sponsors to help us do more! If you're interested in sponsoring independent journalism get in touch.
Let’s work together! If you have editorial opportunities and would like to collaborate with me on an entertainment or disability project, drop me a message.
