Scott Derrickson’s The Black Phone (2021), based on a Joe Hill short story, about a boy Finney (Mason Thames) who escapes a serial killer, Grabber (Ethan Hawke), with the help of an old rotary phone, was a critical and commercial success. It used its retro palette to charming effect.
Black Phone 2 (English)
Director: Scott Derrickson
Starring: Mason Thames, Madeleine McGraw, Jeremy Davies, Demián Bichir, Ethan Hawke
Runtime: 114 minutes
Storyline: Grabber continues to haunt Finney while his sister Gwen is troubled by dreams and communications from mysterious people
The sequel, Black Phone 2, also directed by Derrickson, is the best sort of movie, as it builds upon and adds to the charms of the first movie while telling a whole new story.
The movie opens in the late 1950s with a young girl, Hope (Anna Lore), speaking from a deserted call box at the Alpine Lake Camp in Colorado. The howling wind and driving snow make the connection crackle with electricity.
We move to the present in 1982, four years after Finney escaped Grabber. Finney gets into fights and smokes up as a way to process his trauma. Finney’s sister, Gwen (Madeleine McGraw), is also troubled by strange dreams that cause her to sleepwalk, but she is enough of a teenager to be excited when Ernesto (Miguel Mora) says he is going to buy tickets to the Duran Duran concert. Ernesto is Finney’s friend Robin’s (also played by Mora) younger brother. Robin was killed by Grabber in The Black Phone.
When Gwen figures out it is her mother calling from the Alpine Lake Camp where she worked for a time before she met their father, Terrence (Jeremy Davies), Gwen insists they go too. And so Ernesto, Finney, and Gwen drive to the mountain camp in a blizzard, rendering them snowbound. The camp is cancelled and there is only a skeletal staff.
There is the supervisor, Armando (Demián Bichir), his niece, Mustang (Arianna Rivas) and two grumpy camp employees, Kenneth (Graham Abbey) and Barbara (Maev Beaty); with very un-Ken and Barbie vibes.
Armando carries the guilt of the three vanished children and he promises the parents that he will never stop looking for them. Gwen’s nightmares grow more disquieting and powerful while Finney hears the Grabber threatening him with a terrible fate, while coldly informing him that hell does not burn.
Black Phone 2 has some genuine scares as well as poignant moments as the young people and adults realise things about themselves. The chemistry between Thames (it is turning out to be quite the year for the young actor as this is his third movie to hit the screens following How to Train Your Dragon and Regretting You) and McGraw is charming.
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The music, composed by director Derrickson’s son Atticus Derrickson, is layered and moody and features some lovely needle drops including Pink Floyd’s ‘Another Brick In The Wall (Pt. 1)’. That drive through the blinding snow with the slow thump of the iconic psychedelic rock number in the background is decidedly disquieting. Pär M. Ekberg’s cinematography brings out the beauty, isolation and terror of sheets of snow and ice.
With dreams that are as terrifying as they are revealing, Black Phone 2 plumbs the fears that lie buried in our subconscious or in frozen lakes rearing up to inform our present.
Black Phone 2 is currently running in theatres