Written by Aria Clarke
The Black Phone was generally well-received film critically and at the box office in 2021. The 2021 Blumhouse movie has a compelling premise, a unique villain (The Grabber) and …a clear resolution. So when a sequel was announced audiences were curious to know what the second installment would have in store.
Unfortunately, The Black Phone 2 completely erases everything good about the first movie as the sequel is trite, formulaic, and boring.
What sets The Black Phone apart is that it isn’t a “ghost movie.” The supernatural elements are secondary to the horrors of the natural world. The fear the audience feels isn’t from the ghosts, it’s from concern that a little boy trapped in the basement might be killed by his captor.
The Black Phone 2 spits in the face of that brilliant storytelling and makes the whole movie completely centered around ghosts and visions.
The movie, once again, follows the Blake children, Finn (Mason Thames) and Gwen (Madeleine McGraw). Finn is having trouble adjusting after he was held captive by The Grabber four years ago. Although he was the main character of the first movie, he fades into the background as the plot primarily involves his sister.
Gwen begins to dream about a Christian camp, and it’s revealed that it is the same camp her mother worked at. She wants to go and investigate, Finn says no, she decides to go anyway, and Finn changes his mind at the last second and goes, too. This has the audience bracing for an hour and a half of clichés. And clichés they will receive.
There’s a broody teenager who gets in fights and smokes cigarettes because he’s traumatized. There’s a sage old man who tells the teenager that he only gets in fights because he’s scared. There’s several monologues about letting go of the past. And of course, the villain reveals his evil master plan to the main character for no apparent reason.
The entire movie has exceptionally lazy writing, to the point that the audience already knows what will happen next. It feels like the writers wanted to move on from one plot point to the next with as little resistance as possible.
There’s also a lot more gore in this movie, which provides disturbing visuals, but adds nothing to the plot.
The stakes of the movie feel incredibly low. Gwen’s life is in danger, but because everything important happens in her dreams, it doesn’t have the same urgency the first movie did. Especially since the danger could be solved by staying awake, although no one in the movie makes any effort to keep Gwen awake at any point.
The Black Phone 2 could have been a standalone and it might have actually been better that way. But, by making it a sequel, the writers didn’t need to do any character development because the audience already knows and cares about the characters. They try to force Finn’s trauma recovery at the end, but there isn’t any actual growth shown in any of the characters.
The only thing that makes this movie watchable are the actors. Thames and McGraw deliver beautiful, heart-wrenching performances despite the material they were given. Ethan Hawke did fine reprising his role. He didn’t come across nearly as menacing as he did in the first film, but that has less to do with him and more to do with the bad writing.
It’s disappointing to see the impact of a movie with such a gripping plot diminished by a watered-down sequel. But of course, every time Hollywood comes up with an original concept, they have the compulsive, capitalistic need to run it into the ground by making it into a franchise. C’est la vie.
