A So-So Sequel to a Pretty Darn Good First Film.

Huh, I thought when I saw the first trailers for Black Phone 2. The “Grabber” is back, even though he died in the previous film. Now, as any long time horror fan knows, the Monster can always come back, and yet, the return of the Grabber as a sort of supernatural entity, at least to me, is the inverse of what made the first Black Phone so good: it was a thriller about a demented serial killer that, in the way the King family is so good at doing, with just enough supernatural sprinkled in to add a little extra creepiness factor. Black Phone 2 dives right into supernatural horror territory. The Grabber has returned as a Freddy Kruegerish Spirit of Vengeance out to get Finny and his sister, Gwen.

            Four years after the death of the Grabber (Ethan Hawke) the Blake family tries to move on. Gwen (Madeleine McGraw) is in high school, and Finny (Mason Thames), the victim-hero of the first film, is an angry young man, using marijuana heavily to try and numb the trauma of his encounter with the Grabber. Gwen starts having dreams of a place called Alpine Lake Camp and receives a phone call from her (dead) mother, after which, she convinces Finny and her friend Ernesto (Miguel Mora) to travel there to find out what it all means. Turns out that as a young man, the Grabber (then referred to as Wild Bill) used to work there, leaving a trail of bodies in his wake. Gwen and Armando (Demian Bichir), the adult supervisor of the camp, come to realize they are there to find the bodies of the Grabber’s early-career victims and grant them peace. Naturally, the Grabber, now a powerful, supernatural entity, has other ideas.

            The secluded, wintertime setting, complete with blizzards, howling wind, and freezing cold, is effective and spooky in that visceral way that isolation and severe weatheralways is, and the ghosts of the children and Gwen’s dreams add Creep Factor. What doesn’t work as well is the Grabber as an uber-powerful Revenant. Watching him skate over frozen lakes with his feet encased in ice is a little cringey. The way they find the kids’ bodies (if you’ve watched Freddy movies or much horror at all, that shouldn’t be spoilery) – just below the surface of a frozen lake, virtually down the road from the camp, where they’ve been for decades, despite the best efforts to find them over the years – is a bit silly.

            The movie also sacrifices the subtle scares of the first film for lots of gore, which is fine, but it's further evidence that this film lacks the substance of the first. Not a bad watch for fans of the genre, I just wish it drew more on the things that made the first film so effective as opposed to good ol’ tried and true tropes.