Black Phone 2

GoMovieReviews Rating: ★★★

Rated: MA15+

Directed by: Scott Derrickson

Written by: Scott Derrickson & C. Robert Cargill

Based on the Characters Created by: Joe Hill

Produced by: Jason Blum, Scott Derrickson, C. Robert Cargill

Starring: Ethan Hawke, Mason Thames, Madeleine McGraw, Demián Bichir, Miguel Mora, Jeremy Davis, Arianna Rivas.

It’s cold here.

It’s dark here.

Help us, Finn.

In 1957, a phone rings in a phone booth in the Rocky Mountains, Colorado.

It’s a phone number found carved in ice.

Gwen answers (Madeleine McGraw): ‘How did you get this number?’

The sequel to The Black Phone has the same characters, Gwen and Finn (Mason Thames), brother and sister, survivors of The Grabber (Ethan Hawke).  The Grabber killed by Finn.  And Finn can’t forget it.

He smokes himself into oblivion because it’s all he can think about: the basement, the wait to be killed by this child serial killer.  Until he became a killer himself.

So when that phone rings, he answers only to say, ‘I can’t help you.’

But Gwen can’t escape because that phone rings in her dreams.

There’s a different tone here, icy with religious overtones; bloody fingers that scratch at the ice because, ‘nothing burns like the cold.’

It’s Gwen and Finn four years older.

Finn’s angry and Gwen has lost her bravado.

There’re still moments of the young and bold Gwen, with a, ‘Don’t be gross jiz mopper.’

But it’s a less endearing version with Robin’s younger brother, Ernesto (Miguel Mora) liking Gwen even if her classmates call her a witch.

Ernest likes her weird.  And it’s her weird dreams that find, The Grabber and allow, The Grabber to find her.

I found it difficult to get into this sequel, the quiet scenes felt sparse with the nightmare of The Grabber in hell filmed with super 8 film a stark contrast to the stilted scenes of Gwen in the awake world.

There was no chemistry between Gwen and Ernesto.  Almost cute but more awkward and not on purpose.

The setting in a youth camp added a cinematic trap of a white out blizzard, a frozen lake and electronic heaters slashing red through the darkness of an empty room of bunk beds.

But it was like the depth of the characters got lost in the snow.

It all felt, superficial.

There’re some brutal moments and edgy scares, again, that switch to the handheld camera using super 8 film unsettling, a horror device I’m surprised isn’t used more often because that unpredictable feeling added to the suspense.

But the storyline and more specifically the dialogue, meant the Black Phone didn’t grab me this time.