Black Phone 1 was a film I reviewed in 2022 (which you can read about HERE (*coming soon, still have to migrate it over)), and I’m surprised to find when I look back that I gave it 5 skulls out of 5. I remember liking it, but apparently I liked it the most amount.
The sequel, Black Phone 2: The Phoneaning*, I did not like the most amount. Not even close. It takes the character from the first film, a serial killer of children called The Grabber, and turns him into Jason meets Freddy with ice skates but also a ghost but maybe just invisible. It’s pretty vague. The kids from the original film, who both seem to have had some sort of psychic thing happening, are investigating some old school child murders and soon enough The Grabber is breaking ice and throwing snowballs with nary a thought to any sort of continuity or rules to his powers. He’s just mad that he’s dead and is trying to kill some more kids and keeps trying until he’s stopped.
There’s some good things here. The way they use a grainy film effect when they are in dreamland is cool and sometimes there are some weird out of body stuff that’s OK, but other than that, they just took cues from Friday the 13th and A Nightmare on Elm Street and applied them to a long Stranger Things episode (which, I guess all movies set in the 80s now have to have a super spooky Carpenter-esque score).
This isn’t the worst thing out there and the actors give pretty good performances but otherwise, it’s all been seen before.
*not the actual subtitle
2 out of 5
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