“Black Phone 2” is easily one of the strangest horror movies I have ever seen, and not in a good way. I’m accustomed to classics like John Carpenter’s “The Thing” or “Hellraiser,” which used mysterious narratives to enhance the tension. “Black Phone 2” starts with a similar idea of throwing us into a dark story without explaining exactly what’s going on. The first half hour was a terrifying mix of nightmares, supernatural jumpscares, gore and a premise that had me hooked. Then the movie completely lost the plot and became about an angry wizard girl who swears like a 13-year-old boy.
The plot goes a bit like this: after surviving the serial killer known as the Grabber in “Black Phone”, the main characters, Gwen and her brother, Finn, are struggling to go back to a normal life as high school students. I did not see the first movie, but “Black Phone 2” did a decent job of making the main points clear through conversations between characters. The protagonist, Gwen, who possesses psychic abilities, begins getting phone calls from dead people, which lead her and Finn to a Christian camp in the mountains called Alpine Lake. Once there, they are stalked by the undead spirit of The Grabber, who has returned from hell. It was a pretty fun premise that unfortunately fizzled out in less than an hour.
The “nightmare” scenes are the strongest part of “Black Phone 2”. The cinematography in this movie is genuinely impressive in these scenes. The film used a clever technique of scuffing the visual quality and darkening the lighting to perfectly set the atmosphere of a nightmare. Watching Gwen wander through this shadowy, twitching world kept me on the edge of my seat with terror. It was walking the line of being real enough to observe, but nothing really makes sense when you look closely.
Unfortunately, that’s the only good thing I can say about this movie. Nearly everything else is a mess.
The plot’s pacing is totally absurd. Instead of building up gradually to a big reveal of what’s going on, “Black Phone 2” cuts from dream sequences that don’t make any sense to a heavy-handed exposition dump. This tonal shift completely killed my emotional investment in the story. If only they had kept the mysterious atmosphere throughout without explaining every detail, this could have been a much better movie.
The Grabber is surprisingly pathetic for a serial killer ghost. In several scenes, he takes his sweet time attempting some overly complicated gimmick instead of just going for the kill. This often leads to his victims escaping because he was wasting time. This made him seem more like an incompetent cartoon villain than an evil spirit.
Some of his antics include spinning people around in circles for no apparent reason instead of finishing the job like a real villain. He also spends a few minutes pulling wrestling moves on Gwen instead of killing her with the ax he is holding in his hand the entire scene. His mysterious phone calls were scary at first, but when I realized he wasn’t able to back up his threats, he just started to seem like a loser.
During one of the most intense moments of this movie, the Grabber appears out of the mist of the frozen mountains towards the heroes, armed and ready to make his next kill… and then he starts ice skating at Gwen with an axe and a goofy mask.
Ice skating. I laughed out loud, and the kid behind me in the theater groaned with secondhand embarrassment. The Grabber then immediately fumbles several kills in a row, literally falls on his face, and gets his butt kicked by a high schooler. This guy wasn’t grabbing anything but losses.
This scene somehow managed to get worse and worse by the minute, culminating in the worst dialogue I’ve seen all year. That brings me to my next criticism: the childish language.
Gwen will suddenly start blurting out curse words during “scary” scenes, which felt out of place. I think it was supposed to sound tough, but instead it sounded painfully immature. Hearing that during one of the most emotional scenes in the movie completely ruined it.
Altogether, “Black Phone 2” was a complete waste of my Friday afternoon, and I wish I could get my money back. Maybe one day, this could become one of those “so bad it’s good” movies to laugh at, but I can’t recommend it at all. I’m glad I didn’t watch the first movie so I wouldn’t be disappointed by this sequel. If you want a horror movie to watch this Halloween, skip “Black Phone 2” and stream “Terrifier 2” instead.
4/10
