The Friday Night Horror Movie: Black Phone 2 (2025)

When I first began writing these Friday Night Horror columns, back in 2022, I didn’t really write full reviews of the films. They really were Friday night movies. After supper, me and the family would go upstairs to my bedroom and watch a Doctor Who episode, and then I’d write my Five Cool Things column (which was published on Fridays back then), and then I’d start watching a horror movie. But by then it was usually pretty late. Many times I’d actually fall asleep on the couch before I’d finished the movie. Even if I did make it to the end, it would be way too late for me to be able to write a full review. So usually, somewhere in the middle of the film, I’d dash off my column with promises to write my full thoughts the next morning (usually this didn’t happen.)

At some point my daughter got older and started having friends over on Friday nights (or she’d go to their house), and the Doctor Who watching kind of stopped. Then I stopped writing Five Cool Things on Fridays, and suddenly I had a lot more free time to start my weekend. Truth be told, I often watch my horror movies on Friday afternoons.

Short thoughts on movies I hadn’t even finished became full-on reviews, and here we are. I say all this to admit one thing: I can barely remember watching Black Phone (2021). When trailers started dropping for Black Phone 2, I remembered I had seen the first one, but I couldn’t remember anything about it. I was pretty sure I had written about it, so I searched my site hoping to find a review to refresh my memory. I found my Friday Night Horror column on it, but then had to face the fact that it was written at that time when I wasn’t writing full reviews. And in the case of this movie, I was so spoiler-avoidant I hardly said anything about the plot.

I started to watch it again because I wasn’t interested in the sequel, but I’ve got a stack of Blu-rays on my desk that need watching (and reviewing), so I didn’t feel like I had time. So I watched a couple of trailers and refreshed myself with the basic premise of the films and sat down with the sequel.

Black Phone 2 takes place four years after the original film. The hero of that film, Finney Black (Mason Thames), the only survivor of the Grabber’s (Ethan Hawke) reign as a serial killer, is haunted by his experience. His sister Gwen (Madeleine McGraw), who helped find Finn when he was trapped in the Grabber’s basement, is now haunted by nightmares featuring young boys being murdered at the Alpine Lake Christian Camp. When she receives a phone call from her dead mother and discovers that she once worked at Alpine Lake, she convinces Finn and her friend Ernesto (Miguel Mora) – whose brother was killed by the Grabber – to visit Alpine Lake and investigate.

They tell the camp they are interested in becoming counselors in training. The camp agrees, but by the time they arrive, a great blizzard has rolled in. Most of the staff went home to stay out of the storm, and none of the other counselors (or campers) have arrived. This leaves our heroes alone with Armondo (Demián Bichir) the camp supervisor; Mustang (Arianna Rivas), Armondo’s niece and assistant; and Barbara (Maev Beaty) and Kenneth (Graham Abbey) two employees of the camp and staunch Christians.

As someone who grew up in a conservative Christian environment and who attended a Christian summer camp for several years, I have a little complaint to make. Our heroes – two boys and a girl – arrive at this camp in the midst of a terrible storm in the middle of the night. They are greeted rather coldly and then immediately separated – boys in one cabin, Gwen in another. When Gwen asks about this arrangement, not wanting to be left alone in this strange place in the middle of a storm, she’s told by Mustang that there is a law against underage boys and girls sleeping in the same cabin. Furthermore, while Mustang would like to stay with Gwen, she also is not allowed by law because she is not a licensed counselor.

What the what? I’ve been to numerous Christian camps and retreats, and while it is true they don’t allow boys and girls to bunk in the same house as each other, it isn’t because of some law but rather because they fear the sexy. Boys and girls can’t be trusted with their lust and therefore must be separated. Even if it is in the middle of the night, in a strange place, and there is a scary snowstorm. Even if one of the boys is the girl’s brother. And almost every adult I’ve ever known in this situation would absolutely let Gwen either stay with her brother or with them. No way are they making her sleep by herself.

But I digress.

Gwen continues to have dreams. A payphone (for some reason located outside by itself, very near a frozen lake) starts ringing even though it is disconnected. Finn answers it and discovers the Grabber isn’t dead, and he’s ready for his revenge.

Armondo is suspicious these kids aren’t really the Christian camp counselor type (Gwen’s hilariously foul mouth tips him off), and soon enough they confess to him why they are really there. He remembers the mother and agrees to help.

Gwen’s nightmares were shot using Super 8 and Super 16 cameras, which give it a wonderfully gritty and old look. Unfortunately, they are mostly gore-filled jump scares that didn’t do anything for me. The rest of the film didn’t fare much better.

My (admittedly vague) memory of the first film is that it was very tense and thrilling. The sequel has none of that. They don’t attempt to add anything to the lore. They don’t try and explain how the Grabber is still alive. He’s come from hell, I guess. They do some variations on his creepy mask, which is kind of cool, but he isn’t terrifying here.

I didn’t hate the film. There are moments that are interesting. I do appreciate that they tried to go in a different direction instead of imitating the original, but they missed the goal line.

The Friday Night Horror Movie: Five Night’s At Freddy’s 2 (2025)

five nights at freddys

My daughter is a big fan of the Five Nights at Freddy’s video games, and all their supplemental material, including the movies. Her mother took her and some friends to see the first movie on opening night in the theater. She loved it, and when it came to streaming, she made me watch it with her. I remember absolutely nothing about the movie. I gave it three stars on Letterboxd but I suspect at least half a star was due to her excitement over watching it again. Exuberance is catching.

She has been super excited over the sequel for weeks now, and she talked me into buying her and three friends tickets to it for opening night tonight. They are old enough to go to the theater alone now, so the wife and I were looking forward to a quiet night at home.

Unfortunately, one of the friends got sick, and not being ones to let good money go to waste, the wife and I drew straws to see who would take the now empty seat. I drew the short straw. You would think that if my daughter’s excitement encouraged me to enjoy the last movie while watching it by ourselves at home, then a packed theater full of excited fans would make this viewing even more enjoyable. You would be wrong. The reasons for this are twofold:

It has been a long week, and I was tired. I was in no mood to go to the theater and watch a movie I wasn’t really interested in.
Those excited fans were all teenagers.

The two boys sitting next to me (I’d put their age at 15) talked through the entire movie. I hate when people talk during movies.But then I realized my daughter’s friends were also talking through parts of the film and excitedly pointing at the screen when someone happened that they recognized from the games. I listened to the boys talk, and they two were just excited to be there, and were having a good time, So why shouldn’t I enjoy myself?

The movie isn’t good. I’ve never played the game, but I can see the appeal of wandering around an old, dark, abandoned amusement palace where animatronic robots jump out and try to kill you. But that doesn’t translate very well to the movies. Especially when the movie attempts to build things like character and story into the murdering robot movie.

Mike Schmidt (Josh Hutcherson) seems to have recovered from the events of the first movie (which happened a year ago) and more or less has his stuff together. His daughter Abby (Piper Rubio) misses the friends she made back then (and remember, her friends were actually the ghosts of five murdered children inhabiting those animatronic robots). Vanessa (Elizabeth Lail) also returns from the first movie, but she’s still haunted by the past.

The story of what happened on those five nights one year ago has become something of a legend in town. People love the stories and, in fact, are planning an anniversary party of sorts where they will all dress up as the robots and have a carnival.

There is also a science fair about to happen, and Abby is working on a robot submission (when that fails, guess what robot will come to her aid?). Apparently the school of this small town is cool enough to have an entire robotics department. It is led by a vicious and mean teacher (played to perfection by Wayne Knight) who will surely get his comeuppance.

Matthew Lillard returns in flashbacks and Skeet Ulrich shows up at one point making it a mini-Scream reunion.

Yada, yada, yada, there is some lore building (and no doubt plenty of references to the games I haven’t played). Abby is getting a spirit called from some other dead girl who needs her to come to the original Freddy Fazbear’s Pizza to help the animatronic robots flee the restaurant and wreak havoc on the town.

There are a few decent jump scares, and the scenes in the pizzeria have a certain eeriness to them, but mostly the film is just dumb. I suspect a lot of that is the translation from game to screen. Things that work well when you are playing a game are pretty idiotic when watching it happen in a movie.

For example, the original Freddy’s has some kind of fake river flowing through it. It is maybe three feet deep, and the walls surrounding it go up another foot or two. It would not be a difficult thing to climb out of. Twice characters fall into it and can’t get out of it. Another time a character has to log into a computer and try and shut down the Wi-Fi signal (which is what controls the robots). We see a lot of screenshots with him clicking through boxes. Both of these things seem very much like something you’d deal with effectively in a game, but on screen…boring.

But the girls had fun, and sometimes that’s all that matters.

The Friday Night Horror Movie: Nocturne (2020)

nocturne movie poster

I don’t know why I keep watching films made under the Blumhouse banner. They are all well made. They have good production values. They look great. They are often very well-acted and usually the direction is handled well. But there is something so slick, so generic about them that I find almost all of them instantly forgettable. They feel as if they are made by a committee in a factory instead of by a passionate creator with a specific point of view.

Nocturne is a perfect example of this. It has a decent story and it was obviously made by good craftsmen. But it feels like a retread of Black Swan with a bit of Whiplash thrown in but with no interesting ideas of its own.

Juliet (Sydney Sweeney) and Vivian Lowe (Madison Iseman) are twin sisters who have been training to become concert pianists from a very young age. Vivian is the prodigy having just been accepted to Julliard while Juliet did not get accepted, and as it was the only school she applied too will be taking a year off. They are both seniors at a prestigious music academy.

The film begins with another student, the best in her class committing suicide by jumping off a balcony. She was set to star in the senior showcase and now there is an empty spot. All seniors are welcome to apply.

Juliet accidentally discovers the dead girl’s theory notebook which is full of all kinds of mystical horror movie drawings. Naturally, she starts using it and naturally her musical skills improve dramatically.

The sisters don’t seem to like each other very much and their rivalry skyrockets now that they have the chance to star in the senior showcase.

All of this is a good setup for something interesting to happen. But it never does. I expected the notebook angle to go into supernatural occult territory. It seemed to think about doing exactly that, but then pulled back. Juliet keeps studying and playing the songs inside it. Her skills improve and her life begins mimicking the weird drawings inside. But she never takes it too far.

The sisters fight. One of them gets hurt. One of them cheats with the other one’s boyfriend, but again the film never really runs with these ideas. A film like this should take extremes. It doesn’t need to be sort of realistic.

It is a Blumhouse film so the production values are high. It looks good. I think Sydney Sweeney is a very fine actress, but there is nothing for her to really bite into here.

Two months from now I’ll be scrolling through Amazon and I’ll see this film pop up. I’ll have to look it up on Letterboxd to see if I’ve seen it before and I’ll be surprised by the answer.

The Friday Night Horror Movie: The Hunt (2020)

the hunt movie poster

A group of strangers wake up in an isolated forest with gags locked in their mouths. They stumble about until they find a large crate in the middle of a field. Inside the crate, they find a whole bunch of weapons. They find the key to their gags on the ground. As they are unlocking their gags and grabbing the weapons someone starts shooting at them. Several are killed and the rest scatter and run. They are being hunted.

The Hunt is an update on the classic story The Most Dangerous Game but with a lot of unnecessary and rather clunky political satire thrown in.

It was directed by Craig Zobel from a script by Nick Cuse and Damon Lindelof. It was produced under Blumouse Production and it has that same dull slickness that so many of his films contain. It looks good and its production values are nice but there isn’t a distinct directorial voice. It is entertaining, but ultimately forgettable.

The hunters pretty quickly take care of most of their prey, leaving only Crystal (Betty Gilpin) as the last one standing. They apparently didn’t do their homework as she is one tough cookie and has been in more than one fight before.

Gilpin is wonderful in this and she makes it all worth watching. She’s tough and savvy, and there is a little more than a glint in her eye as she takes down her attackers one by one. I’m a fan of The Most Dangerous Game stories (and there have been a lot of adaptations of the 1924 short story by Richard Connell) and I enjoyed seeing it in this modern update.

The hunters here are rich, liberal elites and they are preying on poor, illiterate rednecks whom they seem as contemptible (or deplorable if you will). The film tries to satirize both sides but its humor is too broad and blunt to actually be funny. My favorite bit comes when the hunters are choosing their prey by looking through a slide show of potential victims, all of whom have online profiles they disagree with. It is mostly white, bearded dudes but then a black guy in a cowboy hat shows up. Immediately the response is that they can’t hunt a black guy but then someone chimes in that they’ll get in trouble if they don’t have some diversity.

They bang the satiric drum throughout the film, mocking both sides with broad strokes so much that it distracted me completely from the pretty good humans hunting humans thriller aspects of the film.

The cast is filled with names you likely know – Emma Roberts, Ike Barinholtz, Sturgill Simpson, Macon Blair, Ethan Suplee, Glenn Howerton, and Hilary Swank – most of whom are making glorified cameos, many of which are promptly killed. I love when movies do that, and I love how those early deaths give the movie a feeling of anything can happen.

Of course, it then settles down into relative predictability, but for at least a few minutes I thought they were going off the rails in really interesting ways.

Like I said it ultimately winds up being an enjoyable but forgettable film. Gilpin absolutely makes it worth a watch.

The Friday Night Horror Movie: The Black Phone (2021)

the black phone

As much as possible I try to go into a movie knowing very little. I find not having expectations on what to expect really helps the viewing experience. That’s probably a funny thing to say from a guy who regularly reviews movies a lot of you haven’t seen, but it is true.

The Black Phone is a movie I kept seeing people excitedly talking about when it came out, but I successfully kept myself from actually reading those things, and thus I came to it knowing nothing more than Ethan Hawke apparently wears a lot of scary-looking masks.

I’ll tell you all just slightly more about it. Hawke plays a crazy dude who abducts children and…well I won’t spoil what he does. Actually, I don’t really know because I haven’t finished the film. The main story revolves around one boy who is abducted and placed into a large basement. There is a phone on the wall, but it is disconnected. Except it keeps ringing and the people who answer on the other end are boys Ethan Hawke previously abducted.

I’m maybe 45 minutes into it and so far I’m digging it. It has that Blumhouse slickness to it that tends to keep me from loving films that come under that banner, but Hawke is creepy and the 1970s setting is done well. I especially was enjoying a foul-mouthed, and tough girl who is our hero’s sister. I hope she comes to his rescue before it is all said and done.

And now I must get back to it.