The Grabber continues to torment Finney and Gwen Shaw from beyond the grave in this follow-up to the 2021 hit horror film from director Scott Derrickson.
The film adaptation of Joe Hill’s short story The Black Phone came out in 2021 and emerged as a solid box office and critical success story in Hollywood’s first year of significant activity following the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic thanks to a well-written dynamic between the protagonist and his sister, creative filmmaking choices from director Scott Derrickson and a refreshingly intimidating performance from Ethan Hawke. Naturally, a sequel was greenlit soon after and finally emerges just in time for Halloween in the form of Black Phone 2, which despite some minor familiarities and script issues, surpasses its predecessor in almost every way.
Four years after the first Black Phone, Finney Shaw (Mason Thames) is struggling to cope with his horrific experience in captivity of The Grabber (Ethan Hawke), doing so by smoking marijuana alone and bullying other kids in his class. His sister Gwen (Madeleine McGraw) is exploring a relationship with Ernesto (Miguel Mora), while also having nightmares of children being murdered in graphic detail that lead her sleepwalking toward a black phone from which she receives calls from her mother circa-1950s during her stay at a winter youth camp.
To solve the mysterious meaning of her dreams and silence them once and for all, Gwen, Ernesto and Finney venture to Alpine Lake Youth Camp under the guise of applying to be camp counselors, only to be snowed in at the camp by a freak blizzard, and forced to stay under the watchful eyes of the camp’s caretaker Armando (Demian Bichir), his niece Mustang (Arianna Rivas), and the devout Christian couple Kenneth and Barbara (Graham Abbey and Maev Beaty, respectively), all of whom try to help the teenage trio understand what Gwen’s dreams are trying to say about the camp and the looming threat The Grabber now plays from beyond the grave.
A lot of the elements that made The Black Phone a solid horror film in 2021 are thankfully present here, most notably the well-written dynamic between the Shaw siblings, but with an added freshness thanks to the narrative’s main focus on Gwen this time around. She and Finney call each other juvenile and vulgar names when they’re bantering back and forth, but when the chips are down and Gwen is sleepwalking in one of her many nightmares, Finney drops everything to bring her back to reality and inside from the cold.
What also helps in this are the strong performances from both lead actors. Thames conveys just the right amount of feigned toughness to show Finney’s foolishness in an instance where Gwen and Ernesto converse, but his vulnerability feels real when The Grabber torments his mind. McGraw matches him through a performance that lays out Gwen’s distress for all the characters and even audiences to see via powerful, honest emotions that conjure immediate sympathy.
But what makes Black Phone 2 live up to the original film is Scott Derrickson’s direction. Long, slow takes on wide shots and a suffocatingly cold tone combine with moody shadows and an incessant snowstorm in the winter setting to maximize the isolation felt by the small ensemble, as they’re confined in the youth camp, and in Finney and Gwen’s cases, with their inner thoughts. Derrickson even implements Gwen’s nightmares with an aged filmic look reminiscent of the haunted home movies from Sinister, and nails the ominous nature of dreams with no audible dialogue as a character tries speaking and incendiary cuts from one setup to the next even though Gwen hasn’t left her initial location.
Derrickson also ramps up the scares for this sequel with gnarly gore effects that contribute to kills more disturbing here than in the previous Black Phone film. If viewers didn’t find the original movie’s violence harrowing four years ago, they will once Gwen sees a spectre’s head sliced in half by a window in an early apparition, and when The Grabber makes his physical presence in this narrative wearing his punishments in the afterlife behind his now iconic devil mask. Scott’s son Atticus even contributed a musical score to Black Phone 2 that unifies all of the filmmaking elements into a terrifying and emotionally resonant 80s throwback.
Black Phone 2 is a well-realized sequel, but it’s not without hindrances; one of those being a pivotal scene at the halfway point that bogs down the movie in more exposition than what’s needed, considering the images that come with a particular revelation are enough to get the drama across. It also can be argued that Finney’s angst and violent urges could have been explored in a way that teases a lack of control within the young man, rather than the all-too tired thematic arc of his learning to cope with trauma.
That familiarity is countered with Gwen’s emotional quest, however, and moviegoers will yearn for her, Finney and their new friends to solve the mystery behind their winter youth camp, and be equal parts compelled by the clairvoyant’s journey and haunted by her visions as well as the frightening work Ethan Hawke does with his voice as The Grabber for the film’s whole runtime. It’s not that often when a sequel surpasses the film it’s following, especially in horror, but Scott Derrickson and his co-writer C. Robert Cargill have done just that with Black Phone 2.
RATING: ★★★★
(out of five stars)