'Black Phone 2': The Grabber is back from beyond the grave

IF the history of the horror genre has taught us anything, it is that the villains are never truly dead.

No matter what our heroes do to triumph over evil, the dark figure with the knife or meat hook or whatever it is, will always find some slippery way to return.

Such is the case with this follow-up to 2022’s commercial and critical hit The Black Phone.

The kabuki mask-sporting serial killer known as the Grabber (Ethan Hawke) reemerges and this time he wants revenge.

The law of diminishing returns seems to apply to horror more so than any other form of movie but this sequel packs in enough scares and interesting ideas to justify another ride.

It’s 1981, several years on from the events of the first film. Finney Blake (Mason Thames), the boy who ended the Grabber’s reign of terror, is not the bullied teen he once was but the reputation he has gained for killing the notorious child murderer weighs heavily on him. His beloved younger sister Gwen (Madeleine McGraw) meanwhile, has begun to suffer terrifying visions of murders that happened at a Colorado alpine camp.

Furthermore her deceased mother Hope also appears in her dreams, suggesting that the camp is about to become infamous once more.

Gwen convinces Finney and her friend Ernesto to travel with her to this camp to investigate what these visions are trying to tell her.

The trio learns upon arrival that three boys were brutally murdered at this camp in 1957 but the bodies were never recovered and the case unsolved. Gwen’s visions of the killing become more graphic until they morph into full-blown supernatural violence.

Finney once more receives cryptic phone calls from the beyond the grave but this time, it isn’t just the victims calling him.

Our heroes realise that the killings of a few years prior and the 1957 murders are linked by one thing: the Grabber himself.

The original film was one of the horror surprises of its year, a taut, suspenseful story of a boy getting paranormal help from previous victims to turn the tables on his deranged captor. Its satisfying ending seemed pretty finite at the time and didn’t exactly scream the need for a sequel.

However cowriter and director Scott Derrickson decided not to argue with the box office, putting together a sequel that builds on the charming smallness of the original, crafting a more expansive story this time around.

Instead of a claustrophobic basement setting, we travel to the dark wintery expanses of the Colorado wilderness. While the higher stakes and bigger budget inevitably lead to somewhat flabbier plotting, the story and character work is compelling enough maintain the audience’s interest.

Though it borrows to some extent from classics like A Nightmare on Elm Street, this film generates a similarly unsettling feeling of creeping dread, partly because the Grabber is such an unnerving and loathsome villain.

Thanks to solid performances, particularly from McGraw and Thames, the movie also mines some depth in revisiting these characters.

While there are plenty of mainstream chills and gory set-pieces, the movie has as much interest in exploring the effects of trauma as in does in scares.

The film is keen to emphasise that our heroes are suffering just as much on the inside as they are when they are being hunted by or indeed hunting down the leering figure of the main villain.

Before they can take down the Grabber, Finney and Gwen must first confront the conflict within themselves.

Black Phone 2 has more on its mind than the average horror sequel.

RATING: ****

Matthew McCaul