Debuting as the revived bestselling author machine was still churning out screen translations, quality be damned, The Black Phone felt like a uninspired homage. Featuring a retro suburban environment, teenage actors, gifted youths and disturbing local antagonist, it was nearly parody and, comparable to the weakest King’s stories, it was also clumsily packed.
Funnily enough the source was found within the household, as it was adapted from a brief tale from his descendant, stretched into a film that was a surprise $161m hit. It was the tale of the antagonist, a cruel slayer of children who would enjoy extending the process of killing. While sexual abuse was not referenced, there was something inescapably queer-coded about the villain and the era-specific anxieties he was intended to symbolize, reinforced by the performer portraying him with a noticeably camp style. But the film was too vague to ever fully embrace this aspect and even without that uneasiness, it was excessively convoluted and overly enamored with its exhaustingly grubby nastiness to work as only an unthinking horror entertainment.
The follow-up debuts as previous scary movie successes Blumhouse are in desperate need of a win. Lately they've encountered difficulties to make any project successful, from the monster movie to the suspense story to their action film to the total box office disaster of the robotic follow-up, and so significant pressure rests on whether Black Phone 2 can prove whether a short story can become a movie that can spawn a franchise. However, there's an issue …
The initial movie finished with our protagonist Finn (the performer) eliminating the villain, assisted and trained by the ghosts of those he had killed before. This has compelled writer-director Scott Derrickson and his co-writer C Robert Cargill to move the franchise and its killer to a new place, transforming a human antagonist into a supernatural one, a direction that guides them by way of Freddy's domain with a capability to return into reality made possible by sleep. But in contrast to the dream killer, the Grabber is noticeably uncreative and entirely devoid of humour. The mask remains effectively jarring but the movie has difficulty to make him as scary as he temporarily seemed in the initial film, limited by complicated and frequently unclear regulations.
Finn and his annoyingly foul-mouthed sister Gwen (Madeleine McGraw) encounter him again while stranded due to weather at a mountain religious retreat for kids, the follow-up also referencing toward Freddy’s one-time nemesis the Friday the 13th antagonist. Gwen is guided there by an apparition of her deceased parent and what might be their dead antagonist's original prey while Finn, still trying to handle his fury and fresh capacity for resistance, is following so he can protect her. The screenplay is too ungainly in its artificial setup, inelegantly demanding to get the siblings stranded at a setting that will further contribute to histories of main character and enemy, providing information we weren't particularly interested in or want to know about. Additionally seeming like a more deliberate action to push the movie towards the same church-attending crowds that turned the Conjuring franchise into massive hits, Derrickson adds a spiritual aspect, with good now more closely associated with God and heaven while evil symbolizes the devil and hell, belief the supreme tool against this type of antagonist.
The consequence of these choices is additional over-complicate a story that was formerly close to toppling over, adding unnecessary complications to what should be a simple Friday night engine. Frequently I discovered too busy asking questions about the methods and reasons of feasible and unfeasible occurrences to become truly immersed. It's an undemanding role for the actor, whose visage remains hidden but he does have authentic charisma that’s generally absent in other areas in the cast. The setting is at times remarkably immersive but the majority of the persistently unfrightening scenes are marred by a grainy 8mm texture to distinguish dreaming from waking, an unsuccessful artistic decision that seems excessively meta and created to imitate the terrifying uncertainty of living through a genuine night terror.
At just under 2 hours, the sequel, like M3gan 2.0 before it, is a unnecessarily lengthy and hugely unconvincing case for the creation of another series. When it calls again, I advise letting it go to voicemail.
An educator and robotics enthusiast passionate about integrating AI into learning environments to inspire students.
