Black Phone 2 is Much Better Than I Expected

The Black Phone is a movie I still think about quite a bit, not necessarily because of its merits or deficiencies, but because I wonder whether my older, full-blown recommendation of it was warranted. Subsequent rewatches were not as kind to the movie, and I often find myself wondering whether it was really as good as I had once thought. Either way, it was well-received and successful enough for Blumhouse to greenlight a sequel, again directed by Scott Derrickson (Sinister). Though the track record of horror sequels is thorny, I'm thrilled to report that Black Phone 2, though imperfect, is a well-acted and brilliantly atmospheric movie that brings back all the things that worked in the original while also mixing in new, even daring elements that mesh surprisingly well. This sequel doesn't abandon everything that made the first one tick, but neither does it fear change.

Black Phone 2 is different enough to warrant some exposition in this review, so hang with me here. It's been four years since young Finney Blake ended the Grabber's reign of terror by snapping the serial killer's neck in his own basement. Since then, his once-alcoholic father has sobered up, but he and his sister, Gwen, have gone the other direction; she became a foul-mouthed social outcast, while he took on the persona of a feared schoolyard brawler; whispers of that's the boy who killed the Grabber follow Finney everywhere he goes. It's now 1982, and Finney is dismayed when Gwen tells him that she's begun to have dreams of decades-old murders that took place at Alpine Lake Youth Camp, a Christian camp with a troubled past. Gwen's dreams once solved a kidnapping case in the real world, so the Blake children realize they don't have much choice but to follow up on them once again.

A dead payphone rests on camp property, and one night, while everyone else is asleep, it rings for Finney. Who else could it be but the angry soul of the Grabber back for vengeance? He violently attacks Gwen in her sleep, a la Freddy Krueger, and though Finney and his compatriots manage to save the girl, they know they have to act fast. You can probably insinuate on your own that the Grabber was indeed responsible for the old murders at Alpine Lake, and Finney realizes that the bodies of those who were some of his first victims must be found if the Grabber's power over the dream realm is to be finally broken. The only problem is that the Grabber has grown far less predictable in death, and there's no telling what horrible things will happen if Finney and those close to him don't act fast enough; no pressure.

The original Black Phone consisted of two major elements that shared roughly equal weight. The first was a grounded element similar in theme to John Wayne Gacy's murders, and the second was the supernatural element of the phone. This sequel leans more into the paranormal side of the Grabber and his one-of-a-kind phone, and the inevitable comparisons to A Nightmare on Elm Street aren't out of order. Another more aesthetic element of the first movie was, well, its aesthetic, and Black Phone 2 seems more interested in preserving that than anything else. This sequel is photographed with all the flair of a 1980s true crime story, and the nostalgic, attractive VHS quality will be familiar to anyone who's seen the original.

Alpine Lake Camp has a wintery, almost-sinister, and appropriately nostalgic tone that is similar to and different from the first Black Phone in all the right ways. It serves the aesthetic of Black Phone 2 to perfection. To those of you who grew up in the 1980s, it may feel like a half-forgotten memory. This is Let The Right One In mixed with Freddy Krueger. Some oppressively eerie sound design, the type you feel in your bones more than you hear with your ears, is the cherry on top of how this movie looks, sounds, and feels.

Yes, Black Phone 2 is an aesthetic piece, and that's not entirely a bad thing. At times, its intelligence can be undeniable. Gwen's dreams gradually evolve with each passing night, a smart addition by the writers. With each new dream, she sees one dead body after another float up to the frozen surface of the lake to scratch another letter onto the ice. "W...B...H..." and so on. These dreams serve to remind us that this movie is going somewhere mysterious, maybe dangerous.

Where the story actually ends up is not entirely sound. Black Phone 2 devolves into an aimless, dream-centered style when given enough time, losing the inertia it initially had. Its spiritual trappings can be unwieldy, and the more it leans on them, the more they sometimes vanish like whisps of smoke incapable of supporting anything more than the ideas and fears they represent. This movie's insistence on including half-baked themes of running away from your fears doesn't help it either, and it may have been better off forgoing any deeper theme altogether. But boy, is that aimless, dream-centered style really something.

Derrickson does a spectacular job of building suspense in his movie, and that's enough. Black Phone 2 knows that the promise of a scare is always more effective than the actual thing, and its grasp of suspense is surprisingly firm for a horror sequel, and a weirdly nostalgic one, too. This movie feels like a bad memory, the type that Pink Floyd's Another Brick in the Wall makes mercifully better and beautifully worse; this is one of the most effective needle drops I've ever heard in a movie. Children of the 80s are probably going to be drawn to Black Phone 2 like moths to a cold, dark flame, and those of us born afterwards are going to be curious what all the rage is about. Derrickson draws us in with the promise of nostalgia, then thrills and chills us in equal measure.

Black Phone 2 succeeds to a surprising extent. This sequel is far better than I expected, an imperfect but patient horror movie that redefines its villain in some startlingly effective ways. It is different enough from the original to form an identity that feels new and fresh, yet familiar enough to fit within the lore of everything that came before. The first movie was a picture of reality tinted by the hint of a dream. This one is a snapshot of a dream fogged over in the cold by a hint of reality.

In your dreams, anything is possible. Like Freddy Krueger before him, the Grabber and Black Phone 2 prove that this saying can go two chilling ways.

Black Phone 2 - 8/10

Psalm 4:8