Hello movie fans! I watched Black Phone 2 on the cinema last weekend. This is one of the horror movies I have been waiting for and watched this year. I also saw Sinners, Weapons and 28 Years Later earlier.
Set four years after the first film, the previous main character, Finney is still haunted by his experience at the hands of The Grabber. He expresses his anger and fear by fighting in school and tries to forget it at home. He still hears phones ring for him but he ignores it. Meawhile, his younger sister Gwen who has the "shining" starts dreaming again. She sees visions of young boys at a snowy camp being murdered.
Apparently, what she saw were previous victims of The Grabber and also involves their mother who we know in part one to have committed suicide. In part two, we learned what really happened and how it connected to The Grabber. They went to the snowy camp to investigate and somehow The Grabber is back Freddy Krueger like and he apparently gets his power from fear like Stephen King's IT. It's up to the siblings again to defeat The Grabber but this time Gwen takes center stage and Finney is somewhat a supporting character.
The movie is a decent follow up the first movie. It expands on The Grabber's lore and also shows the sibling's mom's "shining" and how their stories connected. We also see why their dad is so against Gwen's dreams in part I. The movie had some jump scares and eerie snowy environment but just like Weapons I reviewed before, it dialed down on the gore. The movie transitioned from having a human antagonist to having a supernatural one. The Grabber's powers borrowed some elements from Freddy Krueger and IT but he is half as scary compared to either of them. Aside from his previous victims in the flashbacks, the body count in this movie were practically nil.
We watched in the cinema to better appreciate seeing it on wide screen but the movie is shown in grainy sequences which made me regret spending money to watch it on big screen. It would have been enough to watch it on streaming but I cannot wait for it. I'd rate it 3 out of 5, not a bad follow up but not enough for me to wish for a third part.
Photos were from imdb.
