Traveling back to 2022, I remember leaving my screening of The Black Phone, touched, thrilled, and genuinely surprised having seen what became one of my favorites of that year.
It was a terrific, self-contained adaptation of Joe Hill’s haunting short story, serving as an unorthodox coming-of-age tale with a grounded, terrifying villain, in Ethan Hawke’s The Grabber and a breakout performance from star Mason Thames. If only it had stayed that way.
As good a movie as The Black Phone was, it absolutely did not need a sequel. It was a beautiful one-off story with thrills, chills, and emotion. There’s a reason Hill never wrote a sequel to the story, and honestly no real reason the cinematic adaptation should have received one. While I do appreciate Scott Derrickson and C. Robert Cargill a great deal as filmmakers and storytellers, Black Phone 2, for me, sadly felt like a major disappointment that, in many ways, tends to cheapen the earnest and sincere charm of its predecessor.
Black Phone 2 takes place four years after the events of the first film. Finney has grown up and is now revered as a legitimate badass and survivor. Gwen is now starting to date. And their father has cleaned up and become the loving parent he was always meant to be. Unfortunately, Gwen’s psychic abilities have evolved, as she begins receiving terrifying visions surrounding the mysterious decades-old murders of three boys tied to an old camp their mother used to work at. Seemingly all this appears to be connected to The Grabber, as Finney begins receiving phone calls from his former captor from beyond the grave.
Despite being sold as a terrifying thriller, The Black Phone at its core was about people conquering their demons to become better people. We saw this with Finney’s character, and we even saw this with his father. Both of them conquer their internal and external demons to become stronger, more self-reliant individuals, better suited to face the difficulties life has to offer.
Black Phone 2, however is solely about making money for Blumhouse. And while there is a nice, poignant message about facing your deepest fears and traumas, it executes this in a largely gimmicky, overly predictable way that’s so far removed from what made the first film special; all for a nonsensical Nightmare on Elm Street knock off and silly parlor tricks that really deviate from much of what made the original great. As much as I really wanted to enjoy this movie, I was massively let down.
Frankly, Black Phone 2 really betrays the grounded, sincere emotional approach Derrickson took with the first film for supernatural scares that really make no sense. While it’s nowhere near as bad as some recent Blumhouse fare, the sequel ends up fitting in alongside the likes of duds like Imaginary and M3GAN 2.0. Thankfully there is a lot more that redeems this one when compared to worse movies like those, but it’s a far cry from the first.
Much of what’s being portrayed in Black Phone 2 feels half-baked, as if Derrickson and co-writer C. Robert Cargill were making things up as they went. The pity is the first third of the film is actually good. They bend the supernatural rules established in the first film just enough, expanding on Gwen’s psychic abilities in a plausible way. We are treated to really terrific visual representations of her surreal nightmares, along with the emotional and physical effects they have on her and Finney. However, that all abruptly ends to a screeching halt, when a particularly and overtly outlandish scene ends up destroying the fabric of any of the rules and logic established by the first film and the first act of this one. I’m sure many might like that sort of genre twist, but it wasn’t for me.
I’m all about suspension of disbelief, but when something completely and ridiculously impossible happens in a sequel to a movie where the most terrifying thing about the first was its immersive realism, credibility ends up waning. The moment is so over-the-top that the film immediately has to stop and explain what happened and why in a silly exposition dump, wherein the characters make grand assumptions about why The Grabber is back, and how all of a sudden he has special powers. It’s so out of left field from how the first film and the first third of this movie felt, that it seriously took me out of the film.
As the film progresses it gets even more ridiculous, betraying and establishing rules it sets up minutes beforehand. The film depicts things so that only specific individuals, like Gwen, who are psychicly linked to The Grabber are affected by his violent actions, before the villain is able to start randomly physically attacking those who don’t possess psychic abilities. Submitting to the concept wouldn’t be a problem if these rules had been established either in the first film or as early as possible in this one. Even a brief scene where Gwen is researching her psychic abilities and learning that ghosts can do crazy stuff from beyond the grave would work.
This would especially be helpful given randomly, Gwen materializes the answers to the source of The Grabber’s powers seemingly out of nowhere, through a clunky exposition scene just to provide the movie with MacGuffins. Since these in-universe logistical changes come in the final third of the movie, it feels abruptly convenient and out of nowhere, seemingly existing to force menace into a movie on a wider scale that it really doesn’t need to. It feels like a studio note of sorts to ensure The Grabber can harm anyone he wants thanks to “magic supernatural powers,” rather than keeping the stakes and danger personal to just Finney and Gwen. It not only feels cheap and hollow, existing solely to make things “bigger and scarier,” but it’s also unearned so the terror really isn’t there.
The fact that the movie exists solely based on conveniences is incredibly frustrating. Finney and Gwen’s father shows up with a snowplow out of nowhere, just so they can have a convenient emotional moment. The connections to The Grabber and the Blake family are convenient just so there can be some sort of shocking revelation. The rules of how The Grabber is able to do what he does change conveniently whenever someone outside of Finney or Gwen needs to be put in peril. There’s just no real desire for things to make sense, and that apathy is honestly felt.
Worst of all, the film is predictable as hell. We went from a film where suspense is created because characters are making the smart decisions and it’s just not paying off since the danger is so great, to a film where every decision and revelation made feels route. There are several twists that I was able to anticipate from The Grabber’s connection to Gwen’s dreams of the three murders to emotional beats like communication between characters both living and dead. The movie even frustratingly retcons a plot point from the first film that actually originally added emotional depth to the Blake family’s situation, forcing an unnecessary face to the situation that diminishes the verisimilitude of the situation and the emotional strength the family gains from the first film.
Thankfully, what saves the film from being a total disaster is its emotional strength and the overarching messages it’s trying to convey with its characters’ collective growths. If the first Black Phone was about Finney and Gwen’s maturation, the second is about them learning to deal with the trauma from the first film. Finney is absolutely suffering from PTSD, angry, violent, and full of fear, opting to numb his pain and nightmares by getting high. Gwen, as a terrific foil, is able to face her fears head on, and helps Finney to do the same. Only together and through this strength to confront trauma, pain, and fear can they move on and rest. This is a strong character arc for both Finney and Gwen, and it’s well delivered thanks to fantastic performances from Mason Thames and Madeleine McGraw. They both do fearless and strong work, allowing us to believe in their trajectories despite them having to slog through bad material, silly cliches, and volatile plot conveniences.
Naturally Ethan Hawke is terrific, reprising his role as The Grabber — sinister, menacing, and nightmarish. And thankfully the new characters are comprised of some very likable thespians, including Demián Bichir as Mando, who runs the camp, and Miguel Mora (who played Robin in the first film) returning to play Robin’s younger brother, Ernesto (Gwen’s love interest). Both actors demonstrate a sweetness and compassion that is needed in a heavy movie like this. Plus it’s nice to see that two of the main heroes are Latino (three if you include Arianna Rivas’ underused Mustang).
Visually, as I stated, Derrickson does do a nice job diverging between Gwen’s nightmares and real life. And it adds to a lot of the fun to see a scene juxtapose between reality that every character but Gwen is experiencing and dreams Gwen sees. When the scenes converge things get exciting. And the movie isn’t without its thrills and excitement; those being primarily derived from the good will of the first film and the likable characters we’ve grown to love. I just wish it were enough to save it from a forced unnecessary story that really stretches its purpose for existing and wears out its welcome.
I can’t explicitly say that the movie is flat out terrible. It’s not. Derrickson and Cargill keep it from being a disaster on par with legitimately bad Blumhouse productions. It’s just a massive disappointment to a movie I just really honestly enjoyed, and it frankly has no reason for existing. I truly wish they just left it alone, and its creation really does contribute to the cynical notion that studios and production companies will squeeze every cent out of any success, moderate or large. Having said that, given The Grabber’s newly minted iconography, I still predict this to be a solid, if not larger success than the first film. And if that’s the case, at least it’s great news for the movie’s lovely and talented cast, who I wish nothing but success for. The only other thing further I’d wish for, however, is that this is the final time The Black Phone rings.
Overall Score (on an entertainment level): C
Overall Score (on a representation level): B
Black Phone 2 is in theaters this Friday, October 17.