Black Phone 2 Review – Successful Horror Follow-up Heads Towards Elm Street

Arriving as the resurrected master of horror machine was persistently generating screen translations, without concern for excellence, the original film felt like a lazy fanboy tribute. Set against a 1970s small town setting, young performers, gifted youths and twisted community predator, it was close to pastiche and, comparable to the weakest the author's tales, it was also clumsily packed.

Curiously the inspiration originated from from the author's own lineage, as it was inspired by a compact narrative from King’s son Joe Hill, expanded into a film that was a unexpected blockbuster. It was the tale of the antagonist, a sadistic killer of young boys who would enjoy extending the ritual of their deaths. While sexual abuse was never mentioned, there was something clearly non-heteronormative about the antagonist and the era-specific anxieties he was intended to symbolize, reinforced by Ethan Hawke acting with a noticeably camp style. But the film was too opaque to ever really admit that and even excluding that discomfort, it was excessively convoluted and overly enamored with its tiring griminess to work as only an mindless scary movie material.

Follow-up Film's Debut During Filmmaking Difficulties

Its sequel arrives as previous scary movie successes the production company are in critical demand for a hit. This year they’ve struggled to make any film profitable, from Wolf Man to their thriller to the adventure movie to the total box office disaster of the AI sequel, and so a great deal rides on whether Black Phone 2 can prove whether a compact tale can become a film that can create a series. However, there's an issue …

Supernatural Transformation

The initial movie finished with our Final Boy Finn (Mason Thames) eliminating the villain, helped and guided by the ghosts of those he had killed before. It’s forced director Scott Derrickson and his co-writer C Robert Cargill to take the series and its villain in a different direction, converting a physical threat into a paranormal entity, a path that leads them via Elm Street with a capability to return into the physical realm made possible by sleep. But unlike Freddy Krueger, the villain is noticeably uncreative and completely lacking comedy. The disguise stays effectively jarring but the film struggles to make him as terrifying as he temporarily seemed in the initial film, trapped by complicated and frequently unclear regulations.

Alpine Christian Camp Setting

The main character and his annoyingly foul-mouthed sister Gwen (the performer) face him once more while stranded due to weather at an alpine Christian camp for kids, the second film also acknowledging toward Freddy’s one-time nemesis the Friday the 13th antagonist. The sister is directed there by a ghostly image of her dead mother and what could be their deceased villain's initial casualties while Finn, still trying to handle his fury and recently discovered defensive skills, is following so he can protect her. The writing is excessively awkward in its contrived scene-setting, clumsily needing to get the siblings stranded at a setting that will further contribute to background information for main character and enemy, filling in details we weren't particularly interested in or care to learn about. Additionally seeming like a more calculated move to edge the film toward the similar religious audiences that made the Conjuring series into huge successes, the filmmaker incorporates a religious element, with morality now more strongly connected with the creator and the afterlife while evil symbolizes the devil and hell, belief the supreme tool against a monster like this.

Overloaded Plot

The result of these decisions is additional over-complicate a story that was formerly almost failing, adding unnecessary complications to what ought to be a straightforward horror movie. Regularly I noticed overly occupied with inquiries about the hows and whys of possible and impossible events to become truly immersed. It's an undemanding role for Hawke, whose features stay concealed but he does have genuine presence that’s typically lacking in other aspects in the acting team. The setting is at times atmospherically grand but the bulk of the consistently un-scary set-pieces are marred by a gritty film stock appearance to differentiate asleep and awake, an ineffective stylistic choice that feels too self-aware and constructed to mirror the horrifying unpredictability of being in an actual nightmare.

Unpersuasive Series Justification

At just under 2 hours, the sequel, like M3gan 2.0 before it, is a needlessly long and highly implausible case for the creation of an additional film universe. When it calls again, I recommend not answering.

• Black Phone 2 debuts in Australian cinemas on the sixteenth of October and in the US and UK on 17 October