Black Phone 2, the sequel to the Black Phone franchise, directed by Scott Derrickson, premiered in theaters on Friday, Oct. 17, and proved to be far different from the first film. The sequel relied heavily on gore, and it deviated significantly from the original storyline. Black Phone 2 also built off the precedent the original movie set, adding even more layers to the franchise’s storyline.
In the original Black Phone, set in North Denver, Colorado, 1978, The Grabber, a mysterious villain, kidnaps children, traps them in his basement, and eventually kills them. Since he dies at the end of the original movie, Black Phone 2 transforms The Grabber into a spirit form. Naturally, the main protagonists, high schoolers Gwen (Madeleine McGraw) and Finney Blake (Mason Thames), figure out that The Grabber’s malevolent spirit is still alive and set out to destroy him once and for all.
In the first Black Phone film, Finney is one of The Grabber’s victims, kidnapped on his way home from school. Once trapped in The Grabber’s basement, Finney must rely on guidance from the spirits of past victims to ultimately defeat his captor. Finney communicates with these spirits by using an old black rotary phone mounted on the wall, which had not worked for years, but ominously rang for him. In the end, with help from the spirits, Finney strangles The Grabber to death, avenging those who died before him.
When Finney was held captive in the first movie, his sister Gwen desperately tried to find him through visions that came to her in her dreams. Gwen inherited these visions from her mother, Hope Adler (Anna Lore). But since these visions drove her mother to suicide, her father, Terrence Blake, hates these visions in the films, leaving Gwen to struggle with these visions
In Black Phone 2, Gwen continues to experience supernatural visions, and Finney continues receiving random phone calls from the dead at various old-school phone booths. When Gwen starts receiving gruesome visions of three boys being brutally murdered and dumped into a remote frozen lake, she and Finney realize that The Grabber has not been completely defeated. In fact, he is wreaking havoc from the dead at a Christian youth camp called Alpine Lake, in spirit form. This camp, uncoincidentally, is where their deceased mother Hope also went as a child. Gwen and Finney end up going up to Alpine Lake to confront The Grabber with their classmate, Ernesto Arenallo (Miguel Mora).
The group’s confrontation with The Grabber at Alpine Lake is the crux of the storyline in Black Phone 2. The Grabber’s evil spirit covets the three dead boys hidden in the icy depths of Alpine Lake, and he endeavors to keep them in his clutches at all costs. Ultimately, Gwen and Finney must confront their fears and the devastating loss of their mother as they attempt to release the three boys and put them to rest, destroying The Grabber once and for all.
Black Phone 2 has a much heavier undertone than the original film. Derrickson had his work cut out for him to persuade the audience that The Grabber, while physically dead, remained very much a threat to Gwen and Finney. To achieve this goal, Derrickson uses significantly more gore than in the first movie, truly making The Grabber more psychopathic in spirit form than he was while alive. While gore was an effective way of demonstrating the peril induced by The Grabber’s return, at times it may have been too much for squeamish audiences. In depicting the killing of the three boys, for example, the film includes graphic details that could have been excluded or left to the viewer’s imagination.
Aside from the incessant gore, Black Phone 2 did a phenomenal job of bringing back The Grabber, even making his spiritual incarnation more terrifying than his physical presence in the flesh. Fueled by his overwhelming desire to enact his revenge on Finney, The Grabber clearly will stop at nothing to kill Finney and everybody he loves. In this manner, Derrickson shifts the entire narrative around The Grabber’s death and turns him into a pseudo Freddy Krueger villain who gets his power from Gwen’s dreams.
Black Phone 2 successfully extends the franchise without making it seem like a pure money grab, a hard thing to do considering the main antagonist was killed in the first movie. The Grabber’s return is a story of revenge, and for Gwen and Finney, a chance to finally finish what they started. With a compelling theme of revenge and a strong storyline, accompanied by unnecessary gore, Black Phone 2 earns itself 4.5 out of five feathers.
