’80s Calling
It’s not back to Elm sTreet, but it’s close.
Black Phone 2
Director: Scott Derrickson • Writers: C Robert Cargill, Scott Derrickson
Starring: Ethan Hawke, Mason Thames, Madeleine McGraw, Demián Bichir, Miguel Mora, Jeremy Davies
USA • 1hr 54mins
Opens Hong Kong October 16 • III
Grade: B-
If I recall correctly, child murderer The Grabber (Ethan Hawke) was strangled or buried alive or something by his most recent victim, Finn (How to Train Your Dragon’s Mason Thames), in the basement hellhole he kept all his targets in, in director Scott Derrickson’s surprisingly creepy The Black Phone back in 2021. But since when has Big Movie let a sleeping dog lie? If it weren’t for late-period Hawke being extra awesome as has been his wont lately (have you seen The Good Lord Bird? The Lowdown? You’ve been told) Black Phone 2 would induce anxiety the minute the news-clipping recap opening credits started. In the end the anxiety starts about 30 minutes into the unnecessary sequel, due mostly to a creeping sense of boredom. Black Phone 2 isn’t bad, it has its moments, but it takes way too long to get to the damn point – and when it does it’s drowned by shameless shout-outs to 1980s teen horror classics.
Derrickson is a genre journeyman who’s had horror success over the past few years with the likes of Sinister, and on the supernatural side in Doctor Strange, and so here he and co-writer C Robert Cargill combine the two by pivoting towards Finn’s sister Gwen (Madeleine McGraw) and her dream visions. It’s 1982, a few years since his run-in with The Grabber and Finn is now the schoolyard bully, much to Gwen’s chagrin. He ignores ringing phones and really ignores Gwen’s fears about a series of recurring nightmares she’s having. In them, she’s getting calls from their dead mother and seeing visions of three disemboweled children, which ultimately leads them to Alpine Lake camp where mom once worked. Armando (Demián Bichir) and his niece Mustang (Arianna Rivas), nicknamed for the horse, not the car are running it now, and he’s been looking for the bodies of three kids who died at the camp years before. Guess who murdered them?
Can you hear me now?
Black Phone 2 ditches the claustrophobic but clear-eyed intensity of the first film in favour of a staticky, 8mm/16mm high grain murk to represent Gwen’s dreamscape, the novelty of which wears thin faster than it should. It’s a discombobulating effect in small doses (as it was in BP), and prominent music video DOP Pär M Ekberg (fucking Lemonade) exploits the low-res muddle for all it’s worth most of the time. What we can’t see is worse than the viscera we often do, but kudos to the practical/CG effects mix of sliding half heads and unseen assailants whipping Gwen’s body around like a rag doll. It’s all very Freddy Krueger-ish, and the thing is many of BP2’s best moments recall A Nightmare on Elm Street (the big throwdown at the end will have you humming that execrable Dokken track “Dream Warriors” from ANoES3), Friday the 13th and the snowbound The Shining rather than the focused tension of the first film.
In the meantime, Finn’s demonstrates an admirable commitment to weed as a way to manage his trauma (an afterthought), and his and Gwen’s reformed abusive drunk dad Terrence Blake (Jeremy Davies) is doing his best to be fatherly and supportive. He initially lets Gwen head to Alpine Lake with her possible boyfriend Ernesto (Miguel Mora), who happens to be the younger brother of Grabber victim Robin, Finn’s only friend. This family is positively cursed by the Grabber (and yup, there’s a family secret it didn’t know it had). And through it all, there’s a Christian undercurrent that seems to be affirmed – even though discount Katherine Keener Maev Beaty is on hand as the ultra-pious Barbara, to be verbally – and hilariously – abused by Gwen (“sanctimonious twat” and “cuntwagon” are among her choicest cuts).
Bottom line: Black Phone 2 simply isn’t nearly as consistently fun as heightened horror should be, even with child murder as the story driver. Sure, it wallows in some ’80s-based amusement – Ernesto talks about waiting in line (yes, that was a thing) for Duran Duran concert tickets, and Finn’s giant silver Sony Walkman™ with complementing orange foam ear pads will be triggering for some – but in its rush to embrace nostalgia it skips over more interesting elements that could have blossomed into more creeping dread. As with most sequels, Derrickson ramps up the action set pieces and leans into otherworldly mysticism because indeed The Grabber is dead. Credit for not making him magically get away I guess, but it removes the story from everyday, people-based terror and puts it in the realm of fantasy, and so neuters what made The Black Phone work. Middling work here likely won’t tarnish Thames’s rising star, though McGraw (Ant-Man’s daughter in the first entry to that series) doesn’t leave much of an impression; hard to do when most of your time is spent in pyjamas looking half awake. Thankfully Bichir is on hand to serve some weary gravitas, as is Hawke, making some garbled dialogue as menacing as it should be. That said, I would not be surprised to hear he literally phoned in his performance and used his regular stand-in for the prosthetics-heavy climax. Is there any proof he was on set?