Four years after escaping the Grabber, Finney is now 17 and still dealing with the effects of his captivity. He survived his abductor, but moving on from what happened proves far more difficult.
Meanwhile, his younger sister Gwen begins experiencing disturbing dreams. The black phone rings while she sleeps, and her visions show three boys being stalked at Alpine Lake, a winter camp with connections to something much closer to home.
Gwen convinces Finney to travel with her to the camp during a winter storm, hoping to understand what she is seeing and put an end to the nightmares. Their investigation uncovers a connection between the Grabber and their own family’s history.
Ethan Hawke returns as the Grabber, with Mason Thames as Finney and Madeleine McGraw as Gwen. Jeremy Davies also returns as their father, Terrence, while Demián Bichir joins the cast as Mando, the supervisor of Alpine Lake.
Directed by Scott Derrickson and written by Derrickson and C. Robert Cargill, Black Phone 2 expands the supernatural elements introduced in the first film. The Grabber is dead, but death has made him a different kind of threat. His connection to Gwen’s dreams allows him to continue tormenting the siblings while they uncover more about the past.
The snowy isolation of Alpine Lake also moves the story away from the basement that defined the first film, giving Finney and Gwen a new setting in which to confront the trauma and supernatural forces that continue to follow them.
Why Black Phone 2 Is on Love of Gothic
Black Phone 2 combines supernatural horror with ghosts, psychic visions, communication with the dead, family history, trauma, and a killer who continues to threaten his victims from beyond the grave.
The winter camp setting adds isolation and a bleak atmosphere, while Gwen’s dreams and the returning black phone push the story further into the supernatural than its predecessor.
Its focus on death, the lingering influence of the past, and the connection between the living and the dead gives Black Phone 2 a clear place within the darker cinema represented on Love of Gothic.