Review by C.J. Bunce
Blumhouse and director Scott Derrickson (Doctor Strange) swept the end-of-year movie awards here at borg back in 2022 with the surprise thriller The Black Phone, including our prize for best film of the year. Every now and then a movie truly keeps you riveted to your seat and this was the ultimate genre mash-up–a supernatural coming of age mystery and crime thriller set in the 1970s. From the trailers it didn’t look like the sequel, Black Phone 2, was going the same route–with its glimpses of slasher horror gore. Happily it’s another lesson in not judging a movie by its trailer, because the sequel, now streaming on Peacock, is a thrilling, chilling nailbiter, as exciting and fun as the original, just in a different way. If you look back at what the Duffer Brothers were trying to show in their first season of Stranger Things –attempting an accurate re-creation of kids, dialogue, clothes, and culture from the 1980s, you’ll want to look to The Black Phone and Black Phone 2 to see kids interwoven in a terrifying journey of the supernatural variety done even better.
The original story, based on a story by Stephen King’s son Joe Hill, followed a brother and sister in a small Denver suburb in 1978 as the town is shocked by a child abductor dubbed the Grabber, who is kidnapping and killing young boys. Set a few years before pictures of missing kids would be the subject of milk cartons across the nation, this was pretty scary stuff. The subject matter is not something audiences are expected to be comfortable with, and yet the handling of it, as well as the incorporation of supernatural elements, was perfect. For the sequel Derrickson takes us on a surprising type of time travel journey using the story hook of the payphone, pulling us back to the origin of the Grabber and how the kids’ mother used her ability to speak to the dead long before the events of the first movie.
Tapping horror tropes from the Freddy Krueger A Nightmare on Elm Street movies, while also creating a mash-up with Friday the 13th by setting certain key events at an old children’s camp in the woods, and adding a dose of Stephen King’s The Shining with the kids being trapped up in the snowy mountains, Black Phone 2 becomes the ultimate trip back to 1982.
Mason Thames is back as Finney Blake, who at 17 suffers from something like a 1980s version of PTSD from his kidnapping trauma. Now he refuses to answer payphones that ring constantly as he walks by, or when he answers he simply says “I’m sorry, I can’t help you” and hangs up, trying to ignore all the dead kids calling for his help. It’s a chilling but understandable choice for a kid wanting to move on with his life. Madeleine McGraw returns as his sister Gwen, who begins to have nightmares where she sees even more disturbing events with greater clarity. The actors who were great performers as kids are a few years older and even better now, especially sharing with the audience the terrors of living with their frightening supernatural gifts. Dialogue and believability of the two actors as siblings is everything.
Joining the older kids from the first movie is Jeremy Davies as Terrence, Finney and Gwen’s father. He, too, has grown from the events of Finney’s kidnapping. Miguel Mora is back as Ernesto, the little brother of Finney’s friend Robin, a victim of the Grabber in the first movie. Gwen and Ernesto are at the early stages of a teen romance as Ernesto begins to ask questions about Gwen and Finney’s role in communicating with dead brother Robin in the first movie.
Incredibly vivid dreams–and incredibly creepy filmed footage–of boys being chased in the woods and horribly murdered haunt Gwen night after night. Worse, she begins sleepwalking, taking her into some of the situations she sees in her dreams. The overlap of the dream world and reality is brilliantly handled thanks to great camera work, music like Pink Floyd’s The Wall and other songs, and a gripping score courtesy of Scott Derrickson’s son Atticus. Visual effects touch on the stuff of The Exorcist. It was a nice touch using the original 1982 Universal Pictures logo in the introduction, too.
Television and movie police procedurals, especially British mysteries, have done the child abduction trope so many times and from every angle. This story is better because the story doesn’t just use abductions as another storytelling device. It gives the victims a voice. The victims drive the narrative, using other kids to seek justice for them, even if they aren’t entirely sure of every element of their journey.
The stakes couldn’t be higher when Gwen convinces her dad to let her go with Finney and Ernesto to work as CITs at the summer camp–Alpine Lake–a camp that her father recalls was the same camp her mother worked at years ago. At the same time Ethan Hawke’s monster the Grabber has found his way back into haunting Finney via phone calls. Ethan Hawke’s monster is a chilling creation, the kind of monster that Blumhouse must be considering for future movies. The Bridge star Demián Bichir plays the new owner and former groundskeeper at Alpine Lake who remembers vividly the three missing boys from years ago. He, the three teens, a badass young horse riding instructor named Mustang played by Arianna Rivas, and two other adults (played by Graham Abbey and Maev Beatty) find themselves stuck in a surprise blizzard in the woods. And then Finney answers the broken pay phone.
It’s bloodier than the first movie, but Black Phone 2 is just as gripping, with a few compelling pay-offs at the end that leave the story with a satisfying conclusion. Chalk up another success for Blumhouse, and a great companion film for perennial favorites like Silver Bullet, The Vast of Night, and The Watcher in the Woods. The Black Phone and Black Phone 2 are now streaming on Peacock.
