Released right in time for Halloween on Oct. 18, Black Phone 2 is presented as a sequel to the haunting Black Phone. The antagonist, the Grabber, was supposedly vanquished by Finney Blake in the first movie, yet he makes a reappearance within Blake’s sister, Gwen’s, dreams and continues to cause violent chaos. However, this time, the film follows Gwen more closely than her brother.
The sequel actually does have a smooth transition between the first and the second movie, and it’s nice to have a change of pace with the plot now centered around Gwen. Finney still has trauma from his experience. However, Black Phone 2 does not carry the same thrill and authenticity that the first movie has. The concept of the first with Finney trapped in a basement is much more interesting and captivating. The second movie’s stereotypical horror story in the woods feels boring. This contributes to the feeling that this horror movie isn’t much of a scare.
The film begins with Gwen’s dreams that revolve around the murders of three children at Alpine Lake Camp, a Christian youth camp, decades ago. Besides the children, she also begins receiving calls from the past from her mother, who actually worked at the camp.
Gwen, Finney, and Ernesto Arellano, Robert Arellano’s brother, go to the camp to investigate. Similar to the first movie, Finney receives a call from a payphone from the Grabber, who vows to kill Gwen and hurt Finney. As days pass at the camp, Gwen goes through a series of dreams where the Grabber appears and attacks her. He is essentially invisible and leaves physical injuries on them. This was when the violence and action of the film finally began picking up. In the first half of the film, not much action occurred, and it felt like the film was dragging.
With the aid of the camp staff, the trio begins investigating the lake right next to the camp. One night, Gwen has another dream where she is attacked by the Grabber, but she realizes that she is in control of the dream. Additionally, Gwen also discovers that her mother’s suicide was actually staged by the Grabber.
The group begins making progress on finding the murdered children, which would remove the Grabber’s power, when the Grabber appears yet again. However, through a long fight scene, the children’s bodies are recovered, and the Grabber is defeated. Even with the amount of violence and gore in this scene, no deaths occurred at all. This made the fight feel less impactful if only the villain died.
However, Black Phone 2 did the stereotypical horror movie plot well. They smoothly integrated aspects of Black Phone into the new setting of a youth camp. All the cliches of the stereotype were altered slightly to fit the Black Phone’s original plot. For example, rather than having the characters chased around in the woods by a villain, the Grabber’s past victims were the ones experiencing this. Additionally, having the Grabber be invisible and only present when Gwen is asleep was a unique take on how the villain would try to kill the characters.
Something that was unusual for a horror and thriller film was that no one died except for the Grabber. There was a decent amount of bone-chilling violence, but up until the final battle against the Grabber, no substantial deaths occurred. This set the expectation that potentially a couple of people would be killed by the Grabber at the end, especially if the Grabber was powerful enough to manifest himself among them after death. However, all the Grabber did was some nonfatal blows. Additionally, the scene ended similarly to Black Phone, with Finney killing the Grabber.
The film was successful in continuing the story and avoided being a let-down like many sequels are. However, it didn’t meet my expectations for how scary it should be. The film is worth a watch for those interested in the horror genre; otherwise, there are better options to get a real scare.
Rating: 3 Viking helmets out of 5
