‘Black Phone 2’ Review: A Horror Film That Doesn’t Grab Viewers

Here I thought social media and artificial intelligence was the stuff I needed to worry about. In the world of The Black Phone, dead technology is a pipeline to dead people. Disconnected pay phones receive calls from lost souls. Dream sequence (or are they memories?) resemble old 8mm film stock, right down to the scratches on the negative and the audible hiss on the soundtrack. These outdated communication tools have been weaponized by the Grabber, a serial killer who refuses to let a little thing like his own death keep him from his passion in life: Grabbing and murdering kids. (His actions are despicable, but you have to admit: The guy’s got a hell of a work ethic. Even in death, he won’t take a break. The Grabber’s got that dog in him.)

The first Black Phone, an effectively claustrophobic horror thriller set in the late 1970s, established the franchise’s interesting love-hate relationship with old school devices. It followed a kid named Finney (Mason Thames) who gets trapped in a dungeon-like basement by the infamous Grabber (Ethan Hawke). Finney’s only hope of escape is the room’s “dead” phone, which he uses to speak to his captor’s previous victims. The voices on the other end of the line sound creepy, but they actually hold the key to Finney's salvation.

Black Phone 2 returns to these characters in the early 1980s. Finney killed the Grabber and escaped his basement prison, but he can’t let his trauma go. (You could even say the Grabber still has a hold on him. I mean, I wouldn’t say that; I would never say something so gauche. But theoretically you could. If you wanted to. Which I don’t.)

Finney’s younger sister Gwen (Madeleine McGraw) is having an even rougher time. Every night, she endures terrifying prophetic dreams, a curse she inherited from her late mother. Her visions keep showing her an abandoned Christian youth camp somewhere in the Rocky Mountains where, every night, she watches helplessly as the Grabber hunts more young children.

After Gwen discovers her mom spent time at this very camp before her death, the kids become convinced they need to investigate. With impressive speed, they both land counselor jobs at the place and head up into the Rockies — right as a blizzard blankets the whole area and conveniently prevents everyone except our heroes (and a small group of potential sidekicks/antagonists/Grabber victims) from reaching the camp.

Snowed in and cut off from civilization, Gwen, Finney, and the few remaining staff members — including Demian Bichir as the camp’s current owner Mando — slowly uncover the place’s dark history. And wouldn’t you know it? The old pay phone down by the camp’s frozen lake starts ringing again too. (Far be it from me to tell the Grabber how to do his job, but if I were him, I’d probably look for places to terrorize kids that aren’t within walking distance of antique phones. That never tends to work out for him.)

The notion that ghosts might be scary and helpful was key to The Black Phone, which was based on a short story by Joe Hill. For this sequel, director/co-writer Scott Derrickson seems to have drawn inspiration from a potpourri of horror favorites from around the time Black Phone 2 takes place. The ghost of the Grabber has evolved into a  Freddy Krueger-esque wraith who haunts his victims while they sleep. The camp where most of the film is set evokes Jason Voorhees’ stomping grounds from the Friday the 13th movies, while the frostbitten weather recalls The Shining — which of course sprang from the mind of Hill’s father, author Stephen King.

Black Phone 2 conjures an artful milieu out of those disparate elements, and it’s saturated with the chilly ambiance of a classic campfire ghost story. But the actual story it tells never quite measures up to its superior influences, or even the previous entry in this series. The Grabber may have leveled up his abilities, but he still stalks his prey through the dream world in much the same way he did when he was still alive; slowly trudging after kids with his trusty axe.

Sure, Freddy Krueger always had that handy glove of knives at the ready. But think of all the inventive ways he tortured his targets. Every dream in A Nightmare on Elm Street was totally different; each kill was presented with all kinds of wild gore and prosthetics. Once Gwen and Finney arrive at Camp Death Trap, Black Phone 2 settles into a predictable rhythm: The teens find some new clues during the day, then they fend off the Grabber (and his axe) when he comes for Gwen in her dreams each night.

Derrickson fills his frame with retro horror vibes, but he relies on them for too long and with too little variation. Translating the visual language of 8mm home movies into a dream is a cool idea the first time Black Phone 2 does it; by the eighth time the film goes back to that well, it starts to feel as old as a rotary telephone. There’s just not enough imagination on display in these sequences or the Grabber’s methods to keep them engaging over the course of a two-hour movie.

Hawke mostly appears as a disembodied voice on the phone and in a small handful of scenes behind the Grabber’s ghoulish mask. He’s effectively menacing when he’s around, which isn’t much. The young cast acquit themselves well — although “Mustang,” a teenage cowgirl character, feels like someone out of a Howard Hawks film, not necessarily a Stranger Things-adjacent ’80s horror pastiche. The non-grabbing characters are also at the mercy of a script that drowns them in expository dialogue, most of it devoted to needless retcons of the Grabber’s origin, and a lot of it delivered in stifling long takes with little camera movement.

In an age where our eyeballs are constantly bombarded with mundane digital horrors — my Instagram just showed me a truly heinous AI-generated video of “Macho Man” Randy Savage yelling at Mister Rogers — there’s something appealing about the way The Black Phones find comfort as well as terror in the analog. But I must admit this particular film did not grab me.

RATING: 4/10

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