[31 Days of Horror XII] Day 15

Director: Scott Derrickson
Cast: Ethan Hawke, Mason Thames, Madeleine McGraw, Jeremy Davies, Demian Bichir
Screenplay: C. Robert Cargill, Scott Derrickson
114 mins. Rated R for strong violent content, gore, teen drug use, and language.

Though I’ve never read the short story for Joe Hill’s The Black Phone, but I have read a number of his works. Hill has a gift for crafting unique characters, often gifted with special powers, and placing those characters in a real world that often exists on one side of a membrane linking our world with a more fantastic, frightening, and ethereal plane. That why I believe that, while The Black Phone leans a bit more into Scott Derrickson’s strengths, the sequel, titled Black Phone 2, has a lot more Joe Hill energy, while still retaining a number of Derrickson’s visual stylings in the process.

Four years after killing The Grabber (Ethan Hawke, Dead Poets Society) and freeing the souls of the children he murdered, Finney Blake (Mason Thames, How to Train Your Dragon) is not in a good place. He’s fighting a lot more often in school, he uses drugs to numb his internalized pain and can’t let go of the past and look forward to the future. His sister, Gwen (Madeleine McGraw, Toy Story 4), seems to be moving forward, but when she begins to dream of The Grabber and another Black Phone located at a winter bible camp back in the 1950s, she and Finney end up taking a job at the camp in order to put her dreams to rest and stop The Grabber from finding a way back into our world.

What I love most about Black Phone 2 is how dissimilar it is to the original. While the first film had a much more grounded take on The Grabber with a little bit of Joe Hill’s secret otherworldliness, this sequel dives headfirst into it. We get more expansion of Finney and Gwen’s abilities, especially the latter, as this film functions as more of a Gwen story. The Grabber has now elevated to a very Freddy Krueger-esque apparition with a Friday the 13th-style slasher aesthetic, and I like the well-defined rules of having The Grabber on the other side of the phone now. I do wish more time had been dedicated to explaining his connection to the phone in order to make his resurrection more logical, the dream narrative fills in a lot of those gaps, but Ethan Hawke gives his performance a lot more supernatural menace, and the makeup effects used to bring him back made for a bloody and exciting take on the character.

Beyond the ambitious screenplay from C. Robert Gargill and Derrickson, there are some excellent early 80s homages in the film’s style. I love that Finney’s feels like the otherworld of the first film, but Gwen’s dreams all take on a hazy shot-on-VHS look that amps up the creep factor and had me looking all over the screen for possible danger. This look feels reminiscent of Derrickson’s Sinister, and it even succeeds at marrying some the performances across the various time periods depicted in the film.

More than anything else, it is the continued story of this family that makes Black Phone 2 so worthwhile to return to. Finney’s tale is pretty familiar, but seeing Gwen explore her abilities and their origins and have the two siblings and their relationship tested by the events of the film and time itself make for a fulfilling character drama. We find, as we age, that certain torches must be passed. Finney and Gwen used to look to each other for comfort from the horrors of their world, sharing their nightmares and fears, but now, with Finney dealing with his own demons, Gwen finds that comfort in a cute boy from school who happens to have his own connections to The Grabber and the phone. Seeing these young performers embody the universal truths was the real emotional hook of the film, as was the further character development of their father Terrence (Jeremy Davies, Saving Private Ryan), who is working toward a continued sobriety in response to the events of the first film. Cargill and Derrickson allow us to understand his pain without forgiving the pain he inflicted on his children in the last movie. The emotional wrecking and potential healing of this family in the face of absolute horror is what holds the whole movie together.

Black Phone 2 smartly changes up the formula without losing much of the impact. That said, it’s never a altogether frightening movie, but the suspense and energy of this sequel will make viewers who grew up in the VHS era very happy. I love a good snowy horror movie, and Black Phone 2 is a very good follow-up that, while a bit less-focused, aims high and far and frequently sticks the landing.

3.5/5
-Kyle A. Goethe