Black Phone 2 And What’s Making Us Happy

Grabbers gonna grab, even from beyond the grave. In Black Phone 2, Ethan Hawke returns from the dead as the serial killer who hides behind a demonic mask. It’s four years later, and the siblings (Mason Thames and Madeleine McGraw) who survived the Grabber’s killing spree are having a hard time with things. They head off to camp to investigate Gwen's psychic nightmares of the Grabber's early victims. Follow Pop Culture Happy Hour on Letterboxd at letterboxd.com/nprpopculture https://letterboxd.com/nprpopculture/ See pcm.adswizz.com https://pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for sponsorship and to manage your podcast sponsorship preferences. NPR Privacy Policy https://www.npr.org/about-npr/179878450/privacy-policy

• 0:00Speaker 00

  This message comes from Capella University. That spark you feel? That's your drive for more. Capella University's FlexPath learning format lets you earn your degree at your pace without putting life on pause. Learn more at capella.edu.

• 0:19Speaker 01

  Grabber's gonna grab, even from beyond the grave. That's what Black Phone 2 is all about. In the original, Ethan Hawke played a child abductor slash serial killer who hid behind a demonic mask. It's four years later, and the one kid who survived the Grabber's killing spree is having a hard time of things, to say nothing of his psychic little sister, whose dreams are literally haunted by the killer. I'm Glen Weldon, and today we're talking about Black Phone 2 on Pop Culture Happy Hour from NPR. Joining me today is Jordan Cruciola. She's a writer and producer and the host of the podcast Feeling Seen on Maximum Fun. Welcome back, Jordan.

• 0:54Speaker 02

  Hello. Thank you so much for having me at this reunion special.

• 0:57Speaker 01

  Exactly, because this is the OG crew. We reviewed the first one. Also with us is Kristin Meinzler. She co-hosts The Nightly on Hatch Plus. Hey, Kristin.

• 1:05Speaker 03

  Hey, great to be back with you two.

• 1:07Speaker 01

  Great to be back. Let's start it up again. In Black Phone 2, it's 1982. Four years have passed since Finn, played by Mason Thames, escaped the Grabber's basement by killing him. Finn's in high school now and struggling because trauma. His little sister Gwen, whose psychic visions helped the cops find Finn, is being tortured by dreams of the Grabber murdering boys at a remote Christian camp. Gwen is once again played by Madeleine McGraw. Together, because this is a horror movie, and it's the kind of decision people only make in horror movies, Finn and Gwen decide to visit the camp in question in the middle of a blizzard. If you're asking how Ethan Hawke's Grabber can come back for the sequel, given that the character is dead, you really need to see more horror movies.

• 1:52Speaker 01

  Black Phone 2 is written and directed by the same folks behind the original. It's in theaters now. Kristin, if I may paraphrase the Steve Miller Band, as I'm often so wont to do, abracadabra, did this reach out and grab you?

• 2:10Speaker 03

  Oh my God. Okay. As with the original, I really liked the look of this movie. It has that super eight faded Polaroid sort of feeling. Sure. I like the characters and the costumes and set pieces. I really enjoyed all of that. But there are also things this time around that are different that I like. The claustrophobia of the basement, as you mentioned, Glenn, is now replaced with the endlessness of the snowy wilderness at this camp, which keeps it from feeling like a lazy repeat, which I was kind of afraid of. I'm like, oh, is this just gonna be back in the basement again? But it's not. More black phones. Yes. And it also feels like the supernatural elements are more integrated into the story this time. In the first movie, I sometimes felt like, where did that come from? But this

• 2:53Speaker 03

  time, it's really folded in. And the movie overall has almost more of a Nightmare on Elm Street feel versus a-

• 2:59Speaker 02

  This is Black Phone: Dream Warriors for sure.

• 3:01Speaker 03

  Yes, yes. This is Dream Warriors. Absolutely. And I loved that about it. I loved that it went in a different direction, a different direction, which in my opinion was less scary than the first movie, but way more cohesive.

• 3:12Speaker 02

  Mm hmm.

• 3:12Speaker 03

  Okay, that's interesting. Jordan, what'd you think?

• 3:15Speaker 02

  I'm very much on the same page as Kristen. I really enjoy Black Phone: Dream Warriors. I, Scott Derrickson and C. Robert Cargill, the director and writer duo who made this movie as well, the first one, they also made Sinister. They are really good at putting kids in peril. They have a real fearlessness in a way that we don't see as much of an American studio cinema with the things that they will do violently to children. And that to me is what Black Phone felt like the first one. It felt like moments of really scary stuff that was really, really messed up and stuck with you. This Black Phone 2 is a superior movie. It felt like the first one was starting blocks to get us to this point. I think that's

• 3:58Speaker 02

  a great aspect of it, Kristen, the like, the supernatural stuff was kind of like, why is this one ghosty thing happening in an otherwise very un-ghosty world? And this one, we fully entered the dream state, the world of the supernatural, the meshing of the living and the dead. The kids have aged into like, really good, like, mid-teen actors.

• 4:19Speaker 02

  Fortunately, like they're still really well suited for these roles. Madeleine McGraw is an excellent crying actress. And thankfully, in this Grabber, which is very ambiently dreadful, as opposed to like more punctuated moments of like really gross terror that I feel like you get more in the first one. We can fully dispose of the mincing homosexual cosplay that Ethan Hawke is doing as the Grabber in the first movie that was absolutely needless. And now he's just like more upsetting Freddy. And I think that's an elevation over the whole first one.

• 4:51Speaker 01

  Okay, interesting. I'm coming at this film from a slightly different angle. I kind of thought this whole film was pretty cheesy, but you know what? It's fall, tis the season. Gimme some Stilton and walnuts by the fire, melt some Gruyere over my French onion soup. I'll take the cheese, I'm not gonna complain about it. I will say though, that if one of the things you liked about that first film was it's, I guess we'd say linear plotting, like the ghost tells him to do X, which causes Y to happen, so another ghost can come along and tell him to do Z, that could only happen because Y happened. Yeah, there's none of that here. As you mentioned, we're deep into the supernatural, which means it's a lot more hand wavy and a lot more woo woo. And that's what I didn't react to. I mean, there's a lot of lore somehow, even though there's a lot more kind of like hand waving,

• 5:34Speaker 01

  about how the Grabber gets his power, how to take away the Grabber's power, which is where for me the cheesiness really comes in and all those very clunky monologues that poor Madeleine McGraw as Gwen, who's great.

• 5:44Speaker 02

  There's exposition happening in this movie for sure. There are moments of downloading.

• 5:48Speaker 01

  It's also the way it's delivered, like she gets settled with this lore about how to defeat the Grabber, which she knows because ghosts, because magic. She knows things that we never hear the ghosts tell her because she's psychic. And when she's doing all that, here's how we can rob the Grabber of his power. In part because of the earnestness, in part because it's being delivered by a 15-year-old character, but mostly because the name The Grabber is really dumb.

• 6:10Speaker 02

  It's never gotten better.

• 6:12Speaker 01

  It's never gotten better. This is otherwise a often quite gory horror film that in those moments gets kind of kicked for me into goosebumps. Are you afraid of the dark territory?

• 6:24Speaker 02

  That's very fair. I actually like that about it. That's a very good parallel.

• 6:27Speaker 01

  This is what I want people to know, because like if this is a me thing, listeners should know this is a me thing. Do you feel what I'm saying?

• 6:32Speaker 03

  I feel what you're saying, and there were a couple of moments where I definitely said, oh, this is Scooby Doo now.

• 6:36Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 6:37Speaker 03

  Now it's time for Daphne to explain what is really behind the grandfather clock.

• 6:42Speaker 02

  There's such YA elements about this. Oh, my gosh.

• 6:45Speaker 01

  This is maybe my thing.

• 6:46Speaker 03

  Yes, yeah. So there are a couple of Scooby Doo moments, but I was willing to give myself over to that because, as I said earlier, at least it seemed more cohesive. The supernatural wasn't just dropped in out of nowhere from time to time. It was folded in, even if it was folded in in a cheesy way sometimes.

• 7:00Speaker 02

  Thank goodness the mask is so effective on The Grabber. I had an exchange that I hadn't really thought about, but like the lack of new created horror iconography, which is in part due to the death of the monoculture. We're like, we're not all rallying around the same things. And like, who besides kind of Art the Clown?

• 7:17Speaker 03

  Sure.

• 7:17Speaker 02

  Is like a new face thing that we're like, that is the face of horror. And I do think having a Tom Savini mask, that this guy, and I like that it comes sort of in parts in this one. Like, there's a sort of evolving face of The Grabber that I think is really interesting. And I like that sort of nonsensical things about him can be chalked up to the supernatural, like the way the face changes and that the the top mask, bottom mask. And I really like that this movie transfers onto the shoulders of Madeleine McGraw in a big way. And I think there is a nice freshening up of going from Mason's perspective to Madeleine's perspective in this movie, going from Finny to Gwen. I think that's a nice refreshing. I really like their dynamic as brother and sister. I like the arc of him.

• 7:58Speaker 03

  Totally agree.

• 7:59Speaker 02

  Caring for her and, you know, his struggles with how he feels like he can't protect her. And that, to me, gave an emotional undergirding to this where at the end, I cried. I did. Me and my wife were sitting next to each other, crying at the end of a black phone. And if you had told me that I was gonna do that at the end of the first Black Phone, I would have been like, I don't think this writer and director pair are capable of bringing that out of me. So like, I was appreciating the emotional aspect of it a lot. And also, the way they filmed the dream sequences, I thought, super effective. The transporting back and forth between those kinds of consciousness was really cool.

• 8:31Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, Kristen mentioned the grainy film stock and that very crunchy sound design during the dreams. That's, I really enjoyed that, too. There is a climactic scene that takes place on the heist that I certainly hope will get adapted into an Olympic couples' figure skating routine at some point. Because I do think. It would be improved by sequence, as most things would. At the end of the day, I did not have a very strong reaction either way to this film. Makes sense because he didn't have a very strong reaction to the first, but many, many people did. It made a lot of money. I mentioned in the intro that this movie is playing in a sandbox a lot of other horror movies have done. We mentioned Dream Warriors. We could spend the whole podcast shouting out the Nightmare on Elm Street references, the Shining references, the Friday the 13th references.

• 9:12Speaker 01

  I thought it was mostly in control of those references, using them, expanding on them, not just kind of drafting off them. How'd you guys feel?

• 9:18Speaker 03

  Yeah, I think so too. I mean, overall, the movie really did seem more confident and more in charge of what it was trying to be. I, I feel the first one. And I think a lot of the reason, just to echo what Jordan said, those core relationships with the brother and sister are so believable. I feel like from minute one, we know they have each other's backs, but they also get on each other's nerves. And maybe one of you is going to narc on the other. And also, I'm totally here for you, but God, you are such a loser. And there's definitely all these complex feelings that come up between these siblings where I think sometimes there's the risk in a movie like this of like, let's make them two A or two B or two C. But this kind of captures all of the complications of having a sibling who maybe reacts to trauma

• 10:03Speaker 03

  in a different way than you do and who's still your sibling no matter what. And it seemed like a natural evolution of the characters from the first movie, in my opinion. Like what Finn turned into between the first movie and this one. Very aggro, very antisocial, very dependent on substance abuse to get through the day. And what Gwen became, which is essentially like a detective in lots of ways. It makes so much sense that the characters turn into what they turn into. And so I think because of those two at the heart of this, and all the supporting characters, I have to say also, were very well written and played as well.

• 10:36Speaker 02

  They expanded, but they didn't take it too far. I didn't feel like I was really losing track of the extra people. They added good texture.

• 10:41Speaker 01

  This is probably a quibble, but in the original film, one of the bits was that little 11 year old, then 11 year old Gwen. Had, as my mom used to say, a mouth on her. And she does here too, but I don't know. There's something weirdly baroque about her cursing in this. Like, there's a little bit too much salt in the soup, a little bit salt in her saltiness.

• 11:02Speaker 02

  It's marbles in the mouth. Like, so choice, that's gonna cost a mint. It's like, you've never heard these terms of phrase in your life.

• 11:11Speaker 01

  I love the 80s, sure, but it's also like, it leaches some power from it when you say, and I guess this is intentional, but at one point she calls someone a rotting poop stain, and she doesn't say poop. And I was sitting there going, is rotting the right intensifier there?

• 11:26Speaker 03

  Also, keep in mind, her character's supposed to be like 15. And when somebody of that age is trying to evolve their swear game, when they're trying to take their swear game up a level, sometimes they're just gonna say really dumb stuff, right?

• 11:39Speaker 02

  So true.

• 11:39Speaker 01

  You're right.

• 11:40Speaker 02

  You can feel the performance of the swearing, like, as a character, but as a person. It's a thing that both of these movies do, that I just kind of like, I throw my hands up. I'm like, why'd you need to do that? Just cuz like, there's an avatar that's like picked in each of these movies to be like, and you're gonna be the 80s. We know it's 1982, man, the clothes look great. Like, this is, I don't mind the swears, I think they're funny. I love who she roasts in this movie for the most part. There are great delivery moments for that. It feels like Derrickson and Cargill just kind of showing off, like, hey, guys, we were 80s kids, like, you remember the 80s? It's like, oh, god, you guys.

• 12:15Speaker 01

  Maybe that's it.

• 12:15Speaker 02

  It doesn't feel like it's actually happening in the movie, in the story. It feels like it's a runner that the writers are doing for Gen X or something.

• 12:22Speaker 01

  No, sure, and I shouldn't be sitting here shrunk and whiting. Elements of style, her curse game, I guess, that's the answer.

• 12:29Speaker 02

  It clunks for me, it did in the first one, and it did with this.

• 12:31Speaker 01

  It does clunk.

• 12:32Speaker 02

  That we're not proving anything by saying that you remember we said radical at a point in time, all of the time.

• 12:38Speaker 03

  Yes, but I will say again, I do think the swearing is very funny at moments. The swearing's really funny.

• 12:43Speaker 02

  Yes, and you're so right about the elevating the swear game. That is a process we all must go through.

• 12:48Speaker 01

  That's certainly true.

• 12:49Speaker 03

  And then we pull it back as we realize.

• 12:51Speaker 01

  Some of us do.

• 12:52Speaker 03

  We can swear better than this, I have a better vocabulary than this.

• 12:55Speaker 02

  We do when we're on NPR, we do when we're on NPR.

• 12:59Speaker 03

  I'd also love to gauge your thoughts on the camp itself. I thought it looked great on screen and completely not at all like my experience of sleepaway camp where you have like 25 bunk beds and four by four feet where you're packed in together like sardines.

• 13:11Speaker 02

  Okay, actually, great fact check question. Is it routine for like a bunking cabin to be the size of a hotel lobby?

• 13:19Speaker 03

  Yeah, it's huge.

• 13:20Speaker 02

  It was huge. There's like a full sprint through it at one point that takes a while. It was enormous.

• 13:26Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 13:26Speaker 01

  And also the logistics of placing a lonely phone booth that close to a lake, which is gonna flood. That's not a thing you do.

• 13:32Speaker 03

  I'm like, is this a climate change issue where it used to be further away from the shore?

• 13:35Speaker 02

  Yes, has there been encroachment on the shore?

• 13:37Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 13:38Speaker 02

  Is that what we're talking about here?

• 13:39Speaker 03

  They would not have that phone there because we all know anybody who's been to sleepaway camp, the only phone anywhere within 100 miles is in that office with the very, very territorial office lady.

• 13:49Speaker 01

  Absolutely.

• 13:50Speaker 02

  And they nailed that. They nailed the one true phone. If the phone was there before the camp, who on earth went up to the top of a mountain in the Rockies to just put a phone?

• 14:02Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 14:03Speaker 02

  That a camp would one day pop up around? And no one's like, yeah, it's crazy that the phone's there, but it doesn't work anymore. They're like, oh yeah, that phone's been out of service for years. Can you tell me why it exists in the first place? What is the phone booth doing here at the camp on top of a mountain?

• 14:18Speaker 01

  It is positioned in the landscape like a TARDIS, and I think that's probably the answer.

• 14:21Speaker 02

  It is Bill and Ted's phone booth.

• 14:24Speaker 01

  It totally is. It totally is. All right, well, tell us what you think about Black Phone 2. Grab us on Facebook or on Letterboxd. We'll have a link in our episode description. Up next, what is making us happy this week?

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• 16:11Speaker 01

  Now it is time for our favorite segment of this week and every week. What's making us happy this week? Jordan, kick us off. What's making you happy this week?

• 16:18Speaker 02

  I'm gonna go with The Woman in Cabin 10, which is now streaming on Netflix. Bunch of billionaires on a yacht. A journalist is brought on board after a particularly harrowing assignment to come and take an easy puff piece about the nonprofit that the matriarch of this one particular billionaire couple, she's, she's passing away due to illness. And this puff piece is gonna talk about the charity work this couple do. Of course, that's not what happens. And Keira Knightley, the Guardian journalist, ends up on this boat and nefarious things start happening. It's a thriller on the high seas. If you're looking for a Tuesday night, something that is low investment, but a little high entertainment yield, and you get to see Hannah Waddingham vamping around a space in Finery,

• 17:02Speaker 02

  Guy Pearce dripping with sinister feelings.

• 17:05Speaker 03

  Oh, he's so smarmy.

• 17:06Speaker 02

  So smarmy. He's a human spoiler. He's like Stellan Skarsgård. You see the guy, you're like, bad intentions. Woman in Cabin 10, give it a spin on the old Netflix machine.

• 17:15Speaker 01

  All right, that's The Woman in Cabin 10 on Netflix. Thank you, Jordan. Kristin Meinz, or what are you, what's making you happy this week?

• 17:22Speaker 03

  In honor of Diane Keaton, who recently passed away, I want to shout out a recent movie of hers that I don't think a lot of Americans have seen. It's a British production called Arthur's Whiskey. It really showcases Keaton's charm while also not leaning too heavily on the trope of her freaking out and crying, which I think a lot of her later movies did. In Arthur's Whiskey, she and her two best friends come across an elixir that transforms them into their younger selves for a small window of time. The three use the elixir to have fun, to settle scores, to seek closure, and do what they now feel too old to do. But the magic of the movie is that they come to realize that maybe they didn't need the elixir at all to do those things. They had it in them all along.

• 18:07Speaker 03

  It's so cheerful. It's so upbeat. It's nice and snappy. It's only 90 minutes. And it has some fun cameos, including Boy George and Hayley Mills. Again, that's Arthur's Whiskey.

• 18:18Speaker 02

  Oh, my God, I want to watch this. This is great.

• 18:20Speaker 01

  Arthur's Whiskey, and that, I guess, is streaming wherever you can stream things, yes?

• 18:24Speaker 03

  Yes, it is.

• 18:25Speaker 01

  Thank you very much. All right, what's making me happy this week? Abrams Books just put out a huge, gorgeous coffee table book called The Essential Peanuts by Charles M. Schultz, the greatest comic strip of all time. Do not sleep on this book. It's written by comics historian Mark Evanir, and it walks you through the evolution of the strip, era by era, as the Swifties would say. It places all the changes that Schultz made over the years in context and reminds you, which I think some people probably need some reminding of, which is that while the merchandising around the strip always leaned hard into the cute and the twee, the happiness is a warm puppy of it all, the strip itself was, as we say, a richer text, darker, sadder.

• 19:06Speaker 03

  Existential, I would say.

• 19:07Speaker 01

  Existential, exactly, Kristin. Never talked down to the audience. I always appreciated that the life lessons it imparted were really clear-eyed and realistic and practical. So, yes, happiness may be a warm puppy, but people do get depressed around the holidays. And trees will eat your kite. And you will meet in life. Many people like Lucy, who will always, always, always pull the football away every time, don't be a sucker. Mm-hmm. It is coming out in time for holidays, and it will make a great gift for that one nerd in your family, that is "The Essential Peanuts" by Charles M. Schultz, the greatest comic strip of all time, which is a hell of a subtitle, but it makes a good case for it. And that is what is making me grabby this week.

• 19:50Speaker 01

  If you want to grab some links for what we recommended, plus some more recommendations, sign up for our newsletter at npr.org/popculturenewsletter. That brings us to the end of our show. Kristin Meinzler, Jordan Cruciella, it's great getting the old gang together again. Thanks for being here.

• 20:05Speaker 02

  Thanks, guys. See you at Black Phone 3. Yes.

• 20:07Speaker 01

  Oh, God. This episode was produced by Liz Metzger, Janey Morris, and Mike Katz. It's been edited by our showrunner, Jessica Reedy, and Hello, Come In provides our theme music. Thank you for listening to Pop Culture Happy Hour from NPR. I'm Glen Weldon, and we'll see you all next week.

• 20:24Speaker 00

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