Black Phone 2

Directed by Scott Derrickson, Black Phone 2 follows Mason Thames’ Finney as he and his psychic sister (Madeleine McGraw’s Gwen) begin investigating the  decades-old murders of several kids within a remote summer camp. It’s a decent-enough premise that’s employed to mostly underwhelming and uninvolving effect by Derrickson, as the filmmaker, armed with his and C. Robert Cargill’s screenplay, delivers an often breathtakingly deliberate endeavor that remains hopelessly unable to capture and sustain the viewer’s interest – with the arms-length atmosphere perpetuated by a recurring emphasis on attributes and elements that couldn’t possibly be less compelling. (And this is to say nothing of Derrickson’s aggressively wrong-headed decision to portray Gwen’s visions using unappealingly, gratingly grainy visuals.) The inclusion of a few admittedly decent sequences within the picture’s second half, most involving Ethan Hawke’s revenge-fueled Grabber, come far too late to make any real difference, which ultimately confirms Black Phone 2‘s place as a woefully misguided sequel that has absolutely no business running almost two hours.

*1/2 out of ****