I always liked Scott Derrickson‘s The Black Phone.
In my opinion, it’s a solidly constructed supernatural thriller with an eerie performance from Ethan Hawke. (Seriously, I have never seen Hawke in a role such as the Grabber before. He is creepy…and I mean, creepy.) It also has strong performances from both Mason Thames and Madeleine McGraw as Finney and Gwen Blake, respectively, who are siblings that find themselves ensnared in the Grabber’s sinister machinations.
It wasn’t until a few months ago that the first trailer for Black Phone 2 released, and unlike the more claustrophobic atmosphere of the original, it appeared that the sequel was going to all in on the supernatural elements. The Grabber is now a spirit haunting the Blake siblings from the dead, right as Gwen’s psychic dreams–more on her general condition in a bit–were growing more powerful. Sounds like a recipe for disaster, right? Well…
Anyways, Black Phone 2 is a damn good sequel to its predecessor, being far darker in tone and a lot more creative in execution.
Black Phone 2 is set in 1982, four years after the events of the first film. The gist is this: after killing the Grabber, Finney is wrought with PTSD, which he struggles to process in a healthy way. He gets into fights, smokes constantly, and has become increasingly withdrawn. As this is happening, Gwen–who has psychic abilities that she inherited from her mother, Hope (Anna Lore)–finds herself having strange dreams regarding the titular Black Phone, along with scenes of three young boys being taken and killed by a mysterious figure. This inevitably leads to Finney, Gwen, and Ernesto (Miguel Mora)–Gwen’s love interest–to Alpine Lake, a Christian youth camp, in order to find truth.
Now, I’m going to begin with my thoughts on Finney. One thing that I love about his characterization in this film is that it feels like a natural progression of what we’ve seen in the first film. In The Black Phone, Finney was a kid who struggled to stand up for himself but harbored a deep-rooted anger and steely determination. That only revealed itself more and more when he was kidnapped by the Grabber and used those traits to listen to the Grabber’s former victims and save himself. In this film, those traits are amplified because of his trauma, primarily his anger. Our introduction to Finney here sees him beating the ever-living heck out of a classmate–an inversion of his introduction in the first film, where he was the one being beaten up. It reveals a lot about his inner suffering, which informs his character arc for the rest of the story.
That being said, I feel like there’s more that could’ve been done with said arc. The establishment is fascinating, especially since it leads to a rather powerful payoff to the end of the film, but I feel like there just could’ve been…more, you know? I can’t quite put it into words. I mean, I understand why Finney’s trauma takes a bit of a backseat here to make room for Gwen’s development, but I wish it got some more screentime.
Now, while Finney has his role in Black Phone 2, it’s Gwen who’s the true protagonist. In the previous film, she had a supporting role, where her dreams of the Grabber and his victims caught the attention of the police–and the abuse of her father, Terrance (Jeremy Davies)–but ultimately proved to be vital to helping her brother. Here, however, we get a far deeper view into Gwen’s psyche, the toll that her powers take on her, and her connection to her mother. Much like her costar Thames in both this film and the last, Madeleine McGraw more than rises to the occasion. She is truly excellent here, perfectly capturing the sheer weight that the Alpine Lake investigation has on Gwen and the others while giving the film a strong, emotional core. She is very much the heart of the film.
On that same note, I loved her character arc. Seeing her gradually become confident in herself and her abilities was incredibly satisfying, and in a way, provided a mirror to her brother’s arc in the previous film. I also like that Black Phone 2 explored the relationship between Gwen and her mother through their shared psychic abilities. (You see, in the first film, we learn that Hope’s condition became too overwhelming to control, resulting in her taking her own life. As a result, Gwen lived in fear of said abilities, and her and her family never got closure on Hope’s death.) We actually get to meet Hope in this film, and through rather creative means from a storytelling perspective, she gets to play an important role in the Alpine Lake investigation. It’s through these little tidbits with her that Gwen is able to get a stronger understanding of her condition and slowly learn to better explore it instead of fearing it.
That leads me to conclude with our villain, the Grabber. While this character felt akin to the serial killers that terrorized America in the late 70s during the first film, Black Phone 2 basically transforms the Grabber into Freddy Krueger. Like Krueger, the Grabber is a malevolent supernatural force that is able to traverse dreams and inflict pain in the real world. The film actually delves more into his backstory this time around, detailing when and how the Grabber first began his reign of terror.
At first glance, the sudden shift to “grounded killer” to “force of pure evil” can be perceived as a huge leap for this character. However, the shift works ridiculously well. Considering the presence of the Black Phone (which Finney used to speak with the Grabber’s victims beyond the grave) in his lair in the first film, the incorporation of the otherworldly fit perfectly. As a result, Black Phone 2 is able to amplify the terror of the Grabber to new heights. While the pain he inflicted in The Black Phone was physical, the pain he inflicts here is both physical and psychological. Him appearing as a spirit allows him to haunt Finney–who is already seeing him via traumatic hallucinations–and Gwen via her visceral dreams. The latter is horrifying, as the film portrays his “physical” form in the dream world, and whenever he hurts someone, the characters in the real world can only see what’s happening to the victim, with the Grabber himself being an invisible entity. (There’s a particular sequence where he attacks Gwen in a kitchen that makes use of the phenomena, resulting in an event that looks more like a frightening demonic possession than just a mere attack.)
If you’d like to read my shorter review on Letterboxd, you can click on the link down below. Thank you for reading!
Sources Used
The Black Phone | Rotten Tomatoes
Black Phone 2 | Official Trailer – YouTube
Black Phone 2 | Rotten Tomatoes
The Black Phone (2022) – Fighting the Grabber Scene | Movieclips – YouTube
‘The Seventies’: The decade’s worst killers | CNN
The Origin of Freddy Krueger: Why He Started Killing, Explained