Scott Derrickson Archives - Sean Kelly On Movies

The Grabber returns from beyond the grave in Black Phone 2. Four years after killing and escaping from the serial killer The Grabber (Ethan Hawke), the now-17-year-old Finn (Mason Thames) is struggling to overcome his trauma, getting into regular fights at school and smoking marijuana. This results in Finn barely registering when his 15-year-old sister Gwen (Madeleine McGraw) begins having nightmares about child murders at a Christian Youth Camp named Alpine Lake. After learning from their father, Terrence (Jeremy Davies), that Finn and Gwen's late mother, Hope (Anna Lore), used to work as a counsellor at the camp, they decide to take a winter job as counsellors-in-training, joined by Ernesto (Miguel Mora), the younger brother of Finn's murdered best friend Robin. On the way to the camp, the three are trapped in a terrible snowstorm, but are led the rest of the way by Mustang (Arianna Rivas), the niece of camp supervisor Mando (Demián Bichir). Mando informs them that the camp is cancelled because of the storm, but they can't leave until the snow clears out. That night, Finn hears the broken pay phone at the camp begin to ring, and when he answers, he hears the voice of The Grabber, who is out for revenge from beyond the grave. Black Phone 2 Synopsis Black Phone 2 is the sequel to the 2021 horror film, based on the short story of the same name by Joe Hill, once again directed by Scott Derrickson (Sinister), based on the screenplay he co-wrote with C. Robert Cargill. Most of the surviving cast returns for this sequel, including Mason Thames (How to Train Your Dragon), Madeleine McGraw, and Jeremy Davies. Despite his character being killed at the end of the first film, Ethan Hawke returns as the devil-masked serial killer The Grabber, who is now a Freddy Krueger-like threat, who begins invading the dreams of McGraw's psychic character of Gwen. Gwen's dreams lead her and Finn to the Alpine Lake Youth Camp. They discover that the camp is where The Grabber committed his first murders, and the souls of these victims are giving him power from beyond the grave. As The Grabber begins targeting Gwen as revenge for Finn killing him, the siblings try to find to remains of these victims, to stop The Grabber for good. My Thoughts on Black Phone 2 The writer/director team of Scott Derrickson and C. Robert Cargill are two-for-two in creating an original horror film that receives a sequel a few years later. However, unlike 2015's Sinister 2, which the duo wrote but was directed by Ciarán Foy, Scott Derrickson returns to direct Black Phone 2. Escaping the boundaries of Joe Hill's original short story, even though Hill reportedly suggested the concept of The Grabber returning from beyond the grave, Black Phone 2 feels just as much a follow-up to Sinister as the original film. This is due to the aesthetic choice, also shown in the original film, of depicting the dreams of Madeleine McGraw's Gwen in a similar grainy 8mm style as the snuff films in Sinister. Like Sinister, these dream sequences don't hold back on showing the disturbing and gory deaths of The Grabber's victims. As all these victims are kids, it just makes it more disturbing. That said, it seems like going in a Nightmare on Elm Street direction has sadly given Ethan Hawke less to do in this sequel. Even before the release of the film, there have been attempts to make The Grabber one of the new iconic horror villains, appearing in Fortnite and on cans of Fanta. However, part of the appeal of Ethan Hawke's performance in the original is the charisma he can show through the different masks The Grabber puts on. However, this time around, Ethan Hawke's performance is reduced to the voiceover of supernatural phone calls and sticking prominently with the grinning devil mask, save for the climax, which reveals the undead Grabber's zombified appearance. Black Phone 2 also falls for the typical sequel issues of revealing too much backstory for The Grabber. This includes not only revealing The Grabber's true name, but also suggesting that his kidnapping of Finn in the first film might not have been as random as it initially seemed. This just serves to make the villain less scary. However, despite my issues with the sequel, Black Phone 2 is still a satisfactory continuation of the story. The film makes the right decision to avoid repeating itself and makes Gwen more of a central protagonist this time around, being the primary target of The Grabber's attacks. However, I also hope that Black Phone 2 ends up being a one-off sequel and they don't continue with this effort to turn The Grabber into the next Freddy Krueger.

Scott Derrickson

Black Phone 2

The Black Phone

Deliver Us

Doctor Strange

The Day the Earth Stood Still