Black Phone 2 (18)

Seventeen-year-old Finney Shaw recovers from his ordeal at the hands of the serial killer nicknamed The Grabber, who prowled the streets of North Denver, posing as a magician to lure unsuspecting children into the back of his van. His younger sister Gwen begins experiencing nightmarish visions of boys who were murdered at Alpine Lake winter camp. The quest for answers leads the siblings to uncover another connection to The Grabber.

LondonNet Film Review

Black Phone 2 (15) Film Review from LondonNet

Ghost stories are rarely as scary on a second reading. That’s certainly true of the snow-laden sequel to writer-director Scott Derrickson’s effective 2021 supernatural horror about a serial killer who prowls the streets of North Denver posing as a magician to lure unsuspecting children into the back of his van. Co-written by Derrickson and C Robert Cargill, Black Phone 2 engineers a simple back story at a children’s camp to flesh out the origins of The Grabber and deepen personal ties between the masked maniac and the young boy, who outwitted and killed him…

There are obvious echoes of Camp Crystal Lake from Friday The 13th in the setting of the second film and the storyline’s heavy reliance on dreamscape terrors begs unfavourable comparisons to A Nightmare On Elm Street. The Grabber, armed with an axe or ice hockey stick, is a poor substitute for Freddy Krueger with his hand-fashioned glove with razor-sharp blade fingers. Goodwill from the original can only carry Derrickson’s follow-up so far and he’s heavily reliant on strong performances from Mason Thames and Madeleine McGraw as returning teens in peril, who are blessed (or cursed) with the ability to connect with the dearly departed.

Four years have passed since Finney Shaw (Thames) was abducted by The Grabber (Ethan Hawke). The resourceful boy may have killed his tormentor but nightmarish memories remain: being held hostage in The Grabber’s dank, soundproofed basement and engineering a daring escape aided by vengeful ghosts of the masked predator’s victims. Now 17 years old, Finney smokes marijuana cigarettes to numb the pain and dull the occasionally trill of out-of-order telephones to signal an incoming call from the spirit world.

Younger sister Gwen (McGraw) begins experiencing visions of boys who were murdered at Alpine Lake winter camp – the same snow-laden resort where her late mother (Anna Lore) worked as a counsellor in 1957. Accompanied by Gwen’s boyfriend Ernesto (Miguel Mora), the siblings head to the camp in search of answers and they uncover distressing connections to The Grabber. Their presence opens a doorway between the mortal and dream realms, which threatens everyone at Alpine Lake including camp supervisor Mando (Demian Bichir), his feisty niece Mustang (Arianna Rivas) and two God-fearing camp assistants Barbara (Maev Beaty) and Kenneth (Graham Abbey).

Black Phone 2 is a stylish but derivative and underwhelming sequel, which fails to build on the skin-crawling promise of the original. Set pieces including a showdown on a frozen lake are executed with flair and Derrickson easily distinguishes between murderous mayhem in the real world and a parallel dream state. The first film successfully dialled into universal fears and sent shivers down the spine but the second chapter fails to connect on the same discomfiting, primal level.

– Kim Hu