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Black Phone 2 Should Be Great, But Something’s Holding It Back
Warning: This article contains spoilers for Black Phone 2.
It’s time to put on your ice skates and slide down to your nearest cinema, because Black Phone 2 is now in theaters. The much-anticipated sequel to 2021’s surprise sleeper hit The Black Phone, this go-around features The Grabber returning to terrorize Finney and Gwen Blake all over again, but this time as a villainous specter instead of a flesh and blood adversary.
The movie has gone over well with critics after its Fantastic Fest premiere, with IGN’s Matt Donato saying in his 7/10 review that the sequel is a “fresh reinvention of traditional slasher tropes.” By all accounts, it’s a good time at the movies that’s sure to satisfy horror fans hungry for new thrills, and appears to be another winner for longtime horror director Scott Derrickson.
However, like with many of Derrickson’s previous efforts, he turns in a solid film, but not a great one. Watching Black Phone 2 crystallizes what its director does well and what he’s struggled with over the course of his career, and is perhaps the most cogent example of why Derrickson has become the patron saint of “pretty good” horror movies. Let’s take a look at why Black Phone 2 just misses out on being the next great horror classic.
Skating to Success
In many ways, Black Phone 2 is a step up from its predecessor. The 2021 original was a solid entry that admirably balanced drama and scares, and created a modern horror icon in Ethan Hawke’s The Grabber. It was also a movie that tied up pretty much all of its loose ends the first time around: Finney Blake (Mason Thames) successfully kills The Grabber in his final escape attempt and reunites with his sister Gwen (Madeleine McGraw) at the end. There was no obvious direction for a sequel to go. Given that the movie was based on a standalone short story by writer Joe Hill, this makes sense. But The Black Phone was a big hit for Blumhouse, pulling in over $160 million worldwide and becoming one of the most well-known horror films of the 2020s so far, meaning a sequel was likely an inevitability.
Black Phone 2 capitalizes on the original’s fairly definitive conclusion by taking the series in a new direction, doubling down on the supernatural conceit by having The Grabber return as a ghost in the same way his victims did last time around. The villain is now the one calling Finney through the titular phone. Stalking his enemies as an axe-wielding phantasm doesn’t just give the sequel a fresh hook, but it makes sense as an extension of the story since the talking ghosts and Gwen’s psychic powers were already introduced in the first film. Derrickson uses this to make his filmmaking more dreamlike for many key sequences, which is where his acumen as a visual storyteller really shines. Drinking in the majestic snowscapes and surreal imagery is one of Black Phone 2’s biggest pleasures, blowing The Grabber’s drab concrete basement from the original out of the water.
Whereas Finney’s character arc culminated with him finally learning to stand up for himself by defeating a serial killer, the sequel is more Gwen’s story. Here, she comes to terms with the full extent of the powers she inherited from her mother even as they put her in harm’s way because of The Grabber’s ability to attack her on the astral plane. This is a smart move not just because it gives a different character a chance to shine, but it makes full use of the genre shift by allowing wholly new takes on the horror sequences. When Gwen is attacked by a foe others can’t see, it makes her come across as isolated from the living cast at the same time her powers connect her with the dead, including her mother. Yet although there’s plenty to praise, Black Phone 2 stumbles in a major area, namely a script that doesn’t do justice to the film’s best creative choices.
On Thin Ice
Black Phone 2 is co-written by Derrickson and C. Robert Cargill, longtime collaborators who return from the first film. It’s hard to say whether they’re equally responsible for the script’s problems, but the writing is Black Phone 2’s biggest issue because it undercuts the strengths of Derrickson’s direction. Many of the film’s best elements are its visual choices: the decision to shoot the astral plane sequences on 8mm, giving them a grainy, distorted look that adds exponentially to the film’s atmosphere, featuring snowy mountains and frozen lakes as primary locations that are beautiful and ominous in equal measure, or the use of dream logic in key scenes, such as a phone booth materializing on a lake with no immediate justification. However, the movie frays at the seams when characters start talking about these things, often coming across like the filmmakers don’t trust their audience.
The first act is rife with tedious character decisions, such as Finney defaulting to an aimless pothead in his post-Grabber life, or wooden dialogue, including some serious “how do you do fellow kids” lines that make the actors seem like aliens trying to approximate teenage speech patterns. Things improve once Finney and Gwen make their way to a Christian youth camp that their mother worked at decades ago, even if it also uses the contrivance of an all-too convenient blizzard that just so happened to roll in that night. This ensures only the leads and a tiny cohort of camp employees are present and can’t leave as the plot ensues. Add thinly-sketched new faces and the characters treating the events of the first film as sacrosanct (what do you mean “of course everyone’s heard of The Grabber”? Is every serial killer automatically a household name?), and it adds up to a movie that can often feel stifled when people simply start talking.
The worst example of this is the scene following up the reveal that The Grabber killed Finney and Gwen’s mom, instead of the suicide that was suggested by the first film. The reveal itself is expertly done, with The Grabber using their psychic connection to let Gwen watch her mother’s death and her father Terrence (Jeremy Davies) discovering the body afterwards. But instead of allowing the scene to stand on its own as a powerful moment the audience can be trusted to absorb, the movie then has Gwen tearfully explain what happened to both her dad and Finney. It feels less like a family reunion so much as three actors standing around reciting the movie’s Wikipedia synopsis to each other. The writing isn’t always so painfully literal, but the script doesn’t complement Derrickson’s poetic visuals. Sadly, it’s something we’ve seen before in his previous films.
One Step Sideways
Scott Derrickson may not be in the same category as filmmakers who are commonly considered “auteurs,” but he’s been an underrated genre craftsman for many years. As a director with an affinity for horror, he has fairly consistently turned in handsome, commendable entries as far back as 2005 with The Exorcism of Emily Rose, a movie whose blend of courtroom drama and demonic possession has had far more staying power than its initial reviews may suggest. He continued this streak with Sinister, The Black Phone, and now Black Phone 2, making solid three star horror movies his comfort zone. Beyond his love for the genre, Derrickson has an understated but recognizable authorial voice, with a strong eye for building tension, a repeated use of Christian themes and imagery, and a rare gift for drawing great performances out of child actors, which is a talent he used to great effect in the first Black Phone.
Despite all these respectable attributes, none of Derrickson’s movies has become an iconic classic. He’s made multiple movies that evoke The Exorcist, but he’s never made The Exorcist. It all comes down to the fact that his screenplays, often written with collaborators like Cargill or Paul Harris Boardman, have never given him the foundation he needs to let his visuals and thematic interests make his work emotionally resonate with an audience long term. His movies are well-made, fulfill their genre expectations, and are clearly informed by his particular narrative sensibilities, but they don’t linger in the mind months or even years later as the best films do. It’s hard to say whether he hasn’t found the right premise or needs a new co-writer to help his work live up to its potential, but it feels like Derrickson has a great film in him that he hasn’t made yet.
This pattern held true even when he directed a Marvel film, the first Doctor Strange. Commonly considered a middle of the pack MCU entry, it has more going for it than it’s often given credit for. The movie is well-cast, has great and distinctive visuals, and even though it never reaches the same heights as the best of the Infinity Saga when it comes to being a full feature like The Avengers or Captain America: The Winter Soldier, it has specific scenes that are among the best of the Marvel Studios catalog. The Ancient One sending Strange’s astral form on a mindbending journey through the multiverse, Strange using his intellect and mastery of the magical concepts he’s learned to defeat Dormammu via trickery instead of brute force, and the beautiful moment where Strange and the Ancient One speak on the hospital balcony as she’s forced to finally accept her mortality are all fantastic, but they’re shortchanged by the standard Marvel movie script problems like underdeveloped supporting characters and ill-timed humor.
Nearly a decade later, Derrickson is still going strong but also somehow in the same place, and Black Phone 2 speaks to that circumstance. It’s a pretty good movie, but it’s held back by a script that doesn’t afford its characters enough depth and nuance to make it a great movie. Hopefully someday Derrickson crosses that threshold, but for now, Black Phone 2 is yet another entry that exemplifies why its director is still stuck in the doorway.
Carlos Morales writes novels, articles, and Mass Effect essays. You can follow his fixations on Twitter.
