31 Days of Halloween: Black Phone 2

2025, Scott Derrickson (The Gorge) -- download

Sequel to The Black Phone, one we enjoyed a few years ago, which took place in 1978, this picking up in 1982.  Finney is Finn (Mason Thames, How to Train Your Dragon), a teen now, come into his height. Dad has cleaned up his act, and is close to his three-years-sober coin. Gwen (Madeleine McGraw, A Christmas Wish), also a teen, and feeling very beholden to, and protective of Finney, has started having dreams again, sleep walking and screaming in the night, and is a bit of a pariah at school for her infamous prophetic dreams. Meanwhile, Finn is angry all the time, and smoking up to deal with the pain of his memories.

Again, from the opening credits, I really liked the style Derrickson goes for -- the grain, the home video look when Gwen dreams, the slightly blurred edges, the colour tones. But where would he go? The Grabber (Ethan Hawke, Moon Knight) is dead, but just a glance at the poster, and we know he's back; but how? What cheap ploy will they use to Bring Him Back. In fact, its not entirely cheap, but in the vein of these Heroic Horrors, it expands upon the mythology present, which again, is right down my sub-genre alley.

That said, Marmy likened it to subversion of the Freddie Kreuger school of spook-dom, in that the spirit of a dead man comes to people in their dreams, which physically presents in the real world. So yeah, maybe a cheap ploy.

Gwen's dreams are of her mother as a child. Mom used to attend a "winter camp" high in the mountains above Denver, a camp that closed in the late 50s after the disappearance of the three kids, but apparently has recently reopened. Finn wants to avoid it all, even answering some tell-tale ringing pay phones with a dismissive, "I can't help you..." but Gwen needs to know what is going on. When she hadn't known what her dreams were about, kids had been taken, which culminated in her brothers abduction -- she is not letting that happen again. She signs herself, and the boy at school who likes her, up as camp counsellors and at the last second, Finn comes along.

Arriving during a massive storm, they are the only kids/counsellors who showed up, the rest having been informed that it was all cancelled due to the historical storm raging outside. Whoever set-dressed this for "once in a lifetime storm" must have been from a warm city, because what the kids dealt with was just a normal Ontario winter day. Anyhoo, the kids are trapped with only the camp owner Mando (Demián Bichir, Let the Right One In), his niece "Mustang" (Arianna Rivas, A Working Man) and two holy rollers. And thus begins the haunting, and response.

Gwen learns that three boys were murdered here, but their bodies were never found. One was chopped up with an axe, one was burned and one had his head bisected. Gwen knows this from her horrific dreams. Meanwhile, they are still calling Finn. It is not until they make a connection between the disappearances/murders that they also connect The Grabber to it all -- he was present at the camp when the kids went missing. He is the killer of them as well. And once that is established, thus begins his Freddy routine, assaulting Gwen she she is asleep. Everyone but the holy rollers becomes acutely aware they have to find the bodies of the children, free their souls, and release whatever power The Grabber has left on this plane.

By no means was this as good as the first, being merely a required horror franchise extension. But I still enjoyed the structure and the Heroic Horror elements. Hawke as The Grabber still freaks me the fuck out.