From The Sixth Sense (1999) comes that oft quoted line delivered by master child actor Haley Joel Osment.
Now we can add “I see and hear dead people” in Black Phone 2, experienced in nightmarish dreams by Gwen (Madeleine McGaw).
Four years have passed since Finney (Mason Thames) was kidnapped by The Grabber (an unrecognisable masked Ethan Hawke) and trapped in a room with a black phone, but he overpowered and killed the serial killer on his escape.
Now 17, Finney is uncommunicative and smokes weed to bury memories.
(Why are so many American kids and adults shown smoking marijuana in movies nowadays, particularly to solve problems?)
His younger sister has nightmares and the spirits of the Grabber’s child victims communicate with her visibly and audibly.
They aren’t attractive sights, bearing the open wounds and scars inflicted by The Grabber’s murderous hands.
Action is thrust into motion with clues Gwen receives in her dreams.
Finney’s and Gwen’s mother suicided, or did she, and strategic planning can be found in a Christian youth camp in the Rocky Mountains where mother once worked as a counsellor.
Gwen is hired as a counsellor at the same camp.
Her friend Ernesto (Miguel Mora) offers to accompany her.
Finney hesitates, eventually succumbs, and convinces himself that Gwen needs his protection.
There in the camp’s snow is set a phone booth with the ominous rotary dial black phone.
It won’t be long before Gwen and Finney will hear from spirits of long deceased children and The Grabber whose grown even more powerful after Finney’s disposed his depraved life.
“That phone hasn’t worked in years,” claims Mando, camp head (Demián Bichir, Oscar nominated Best Actor for A Better Life).
Black Phone 2 contains most criteria required for a good horror flick.
Darkness and night, shots with a character on one side of the screen so that unknown terror can leap into frame, and the notion of isolation: the camp with its heavy snowfall whiteout and Lake Argyle with its sheet of thick frozen ice.
No indication of a town nearby, not even a general store.
The gates into and out of the camp are kept tightly tethered.
Finney, Gwen, Ernesto, Mando and some weird old couple fearful of poking the bear are the only people present… with ghosts of dead people.
Does the Grabber ever kill anyone in this movie? Regardless, the mask of The Grabber has become a current Halloween favourite.
The film has a tense and unsettling atmosphere and you must expect jumpscares; you know, the ones accompanied with a loud noise or an exaggerated orchestral fortissimo.
Neither makes you shudder in fear, but may wake you up if your eyelids have closed.
That’s a problem with the film.
There are dull moments which don’t move the plot.
Its 114 minutes could easily have been scissored by the editor, thus propelling the story to its inevitable, predictable conclusion.
Mason Thames might already be familiar to you if you saw the live-action remake of the originally animated How to Train Your Dragon (2025).
Thames played Hiccup Horrendous Haddock III, changed his voice and gait and the film went on to become the fifth highest grossing film of the year (so far).
Like A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984), The Grabber, killer of adolescents, is already dead.
Sure, Nightmare and dead Freddy Krueger made a bundle at the box office, but doubtful Black Phone 2 will duplicate ten times The Black Phone’s $26 million budget.
In other words, was this a necessary sequel?
This is one of those movies that only exist because the original was too successful to be left alone.
Hollywood can’t resist milking the cow until there’s nothing left to squeeze out.
