Black Phone 2
Starring Madeleine McGraw, Mason Thames and Ethan Hawke
MA15+
4.5/5
In Black Phone 2, the more-than-worthy sequel to my film of the year for 2022, Finney (Mason Thames) and his sister Gwen (Madeleine McGraw) grapple with the vengeful spirit of the Grabber serial killer (Ethan Hawke) at a remote youth camp.
Like the first film, Black Phone 2 balances terror and intrigue for an entrancing experience, but has a wider scope, ramps up the gore and cleverly subverts some of the first film’s elements. The phone, once a medium for the Grabber’s victims to help Finney, is now also the Grabber’s mouthpiece, and Gwen’s dreams (ingeniously shown through grainy film stock), which once freed Finney, are now the Grabber’s window for terrorising them once more.
Director Scott Derrickson executes slow, nail-biting build-up yet again, this time in snowy expanses and dimly-lit halls instead of a basement prison, and the grisly, stressful scares always feel earned (with some impressive stunt-work). The fate of the Grabber’s first victims adds a fascinating investigative layer to the group’s struggle to stop him, and as Black Phone 2 explores the Grabber’s origins, any mystique he loses as a villain is amply countered by his terrifying new power from beyond the grave. Black Phone 2 also breaks up the unease with well-observed moments of humour and amusingly awkward teen bonding.
Thames initially seems a little underdeveloped as Finney, but this is clearly Gwen’s movie. McGraw is magnetic as a young woman who has courage, cleverness and fear in all the right measures, and the scenes of her striking back in her dreams against the Grabber are triumphant without being outlandish.
Black Phone 2 is more fun and less psychologically scary than the first film, but still a compelling, profoundly unnerving horror film, and is playing in most Victorian cinemas.
