‘You of all people know that ‘dead’ is just a word…
As evidenced by Sinister, and his particularly gruesome entry in V/H/S85, horror director Scott Derrickson has an uncanny ability to create singularly nightmarish imagery. The Black Phone, Derrickson’s 2021 adaptation of Joe Hill’s story of the same name, was unflinching in its portrayal of a grotesque child murderer. Black Phone 2 moves away from the gritty realism of the first film and leans into the supernatural instead with terrifying results…
Four years after Finney Blake (Mason Thames) escaped the evil clutches of the Grabber (Ethan Hawke), his sister Gwen begins having strange dreams related to their mother who committed suicide. Meanwhile, Finney is getting in fights at school and struggling to deal with the aftermath of the events of the first film. In a plot point that perhaps stretches credulity a little too far, Gwen convinces Finney and Ernesto (Miguel Mora), the brother of the late Robin Arellano (murdered by the Grabber in the previous entry), to accompany her to Alpine Lake Camp – a Christian youth camp with links to their shared past.
In a world of elevated horror, the idea of a horror franchise anchored by a single villain (Freddy, Jason, Michael, Pinhead, Candyman etc) has fallen by the wayside. The Terrifier franchise is probably the most prominent example, but that feels like very much its own thing. Black Phone 2, on the other hand, is fully indebted to supernatural slasher movies like A Nightmare on Elm Street and Hellraiser, and in doing so, allows a plausible reason for the return of the Grabber, whilst also providing the platform for some truly horrifying imagery. Imagine the snuff films from Sinister, but twice as long, and with an entity as formidable as the Grabber at the centre of them, and you’ll be somewhere close to the feeling of abject terror that Black Phone 2 inspires. Sure, the dialogue is a little too expository at times, the mythology laid bare and spelled out in a way that is too obvious, but in many ways, even this heavy handed storytelling feels like a homage to the golden age of the horror sequel. The camp setting nods at the Friday the 13th franchise, and some of the dream stuff, while incredibly effective, is tantamount to plagurism from the previously mentioned Nightmare movies. When taken with Derrickson’s ability to perfectly capture the aesthetic of shooting on grainy and degrading film stock, however, this grab bag of influences begins to form a cohesive whole that sets this franchise apart from its peers.
While it somehow feels unlikely that big hitters like Derrickson and Hawke will continue to return to this nasty horror franchise, I would welcome a full cinematic universe for the Grabber. Forget Art the Clown, this monstrous creation is far more aunthentically horror, and far more terrifying.
