Review For The Easily Distracted: Black Phone 2

Title: Black Phone 2
Describe This Movie Using One Meatballs Quote:
CAMP MOHAWK COUNSELORS: “We are the C.I.T.s, so pity us.“
Brief Plot Synopsis:
Rating Using Random Objects Relevant To The Film: 1.5 Henry Rollins out of 5.

Tagline: “Dead is just a word.”
Better Tagline: “So is ‘cash grab.’ Wait, that’s two.”
Not So Brief Plot Synopsis: Did you miss the Grabber (Ethan Hawke)? Well, he’s back, which is good news for you, but bad for Finney Blake (Mason Thames), who’s still dealing with the trauma of being held captive by the Grabber before killing him. Meanwhile, nightmares about three murdered little boys plague his sister Gwen (Madeleine McGraw). The murders appear linked to a mountain camp where their mother was a counselor, so of course Finney, Gwen, and Ernesto (Miguel Mora), the little brother of Finney’s murdered friend Robin, apply for counselor-in-training jobs to get to the bottom of everything.

“Critical” Analysis: If you were puzzled by the news that 2021’s The Black Phone was getting a sequel, you’re not alone. Ethan Hawke’s “Grabber” appeared well and truly dead at the end of that movie (spoiler!), but some forces are greater than death. Specifically, $161 million global box office on an $18 million dollar budget. It’s a miracle.

Set four years after the events of the first movie, Black Phone 2 uses a concept from original story author Joe Hill as inspiration. Naturally, it has to pivot to accommodate pesky things like the death of its antagonist. Director Scott Derrickson and co-writer C. Scott Cargill evidently felt the best way to accomplish this was a mashup of the summer (well, winter) camp slasher vibes of Friday the 13th with the somnambulant escapades of A Nightmare on Elm Street. The results are less than the sum of those parts.

One thing that does work is the shifting of the focus to Gwen. It’s her dreams that move the plot, giving McGraw the lion’s share of the dramatic work, and she’s mostly up to the task. It’s just too bad her range of emotion isn’t in service of a better movie. Same goes for Demián Bichir, playing Armando, the owner/manager of the camp. Bichir brings some much-needed gravitas, something of a tall order when trying to have serious conversations about a dream killer.

A good deal of what made The Black Phone work was its grounding in the real world. The paranormal elements were integral to the plot, but didn’t overwhelm it (and Derrickson really captured those late ’70s earth tones). Here, the Grabber is presented as Freddy Krueger without any antecedent or explanation until well into the movie, and only thanks to the flimsiest of horror tropes.

The pacing is also a problem. The original was somewhat ponderous as well, but at least it moved with purpose. Black Phone 2 too often bogs down in expository dialogue or rubbing our noses in scenes of kids getting hacked up. There’s an almost temporal distortion about the first hour, where Gwen’s sleepwalking is at the fore and not a lot happens until events contrive to get our trio to the camp.

Black Phone 2 is not without humor, though. Once the kids get there, this mostly comes from the interaction between the often foul-mouthed Gwen and Barb (Maev Beaty ), one of the Christian camp’s staff. Armando’s niece Mustang (Arianna Rivas) also earns extra credit for pointing out to Barb that cowering in fear from threats isn’t “true Christian behavior.”

As for Hawke, he’s top-billed, but it’s hard to shake the impression there’s some “Pedro Pascal in The Mandalorian” deception going on. That’s his voice as the Grabber, but aside from a few close-ups, anyone could be behind that mask.

None of the probably matters. The original Black Phone was a huge hit, and its sequel lands in theaters two weeks before Halloween. That’ll probably be enough to overcome that Black Phone 2 magnifies many of the originals movie’s negatives without offering much more beyond that than pastiche.

And Duran Duran didn’t play in Denver until 1987.

Black Phone 2 is in theaters today.

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