"Black Phone 2" - Review

Four years after defeating serial killer "The Grabber" (Ethan Hawke), his only known survivor Finney (Mason Thames) is struggling to keep his life together, self-medicating with marijuana and engaging in reckless violence to avoid the trauma. His gifted younger sister Gwen (Madeleine McGraw) receives visions of horror at a youth camp, and needs to confront it. Finney accompanies her there, alongside their friend Ernesto (Miguel Mora), and the pair are forced to confront the past head on...

(Photo credit: Bloody Disgusting. Hell yeah, they're still going! Good job!)
I appreciate Scott Derrickson (writer and director of "Hellraiser: Inferno") and Todd in the Shadows patron C Robert Cargill as filmmakers, despite not being big on "auteur theory" as film is a collaborative medium, as the pair often make genuinely unusual and interesting movies when they work together, blending things and taking a few swings. We never needed a sequel to "The Black Phone", but it made all of the money, so here we are. This one kind of works, I like it. Rather than focusing on the very marketable, obvious spooky mask-sporting killer (an excellent Ethan Hawke), the sequel decided to turn its lense to that story's more interesting element of psychics, and make that a story about how we deal with trauma, how we dwell upon it and the lingering effects it has on the psyche and the community. They have fun with the psychic stuff, and some solid imagery throughout to compliment it (I appreciated the scratchy Super 8 films of the dreams and premonitions, looking like a snuff film and reminiscent of earlier work "Sinister" in many ways), which blends with the backdrop of snow and blizzards and the 1981 aesthetic to create a moody little piece. It's never truly terrifying (or "Sinister" if you will... I will not apologise) and the jump scares early on seem perfunctory and actually a tad annoying, but when doing its own thing (here a riff on "Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors" with sprinklings of "Akira"! Fuck yes) and preferring to be thoughtful and interesting rather than spooky, it works. Its look at these characters and how they react to the news, spedning time in their heads.
The score is fucking phenomenal, worth the admission alone.
And it's lovely seeing Arianna Rivas in something non-"Working Man" this year, you go girl.
I like it. It's an unecessary film transformed into an intriguing one. It loses steam when Demian Bechir begins explaining the plan, but recovers at the end with ice-skate battles and psychic children detonating phoneboxes.

"Good Boy" - Review

After his owner (Shane Jensen) comes down with an illness and heads to his grandfather's old cabin to clear his head, excellent dog Indy (Indy) sticks by his best friend and settles into a new home. But something is awry, in between tapes of the old man (Larry Fessenden), odd noises and even odder behaviour of his owner, and Indy sets out to investigate and do his best.

Filming a horror movie from the perspective of a dog (owned by director Leon Berger, such a Goddamn fitting name) is absolutely a gimmick, but by God is it a gimmick which works. We'd have gotten this thing all sorts years ago (and indeed, friend of horror Larry Fessenden shows up in this to practically flex the filmmakers' horror indie credentials), a sweet little low budget affair which uses that budget to its advantage, very much my thing.
The film is not particularly scary outside of a few select images (I'm a sucker for a silhouette at a window, and looming figures in the background), and it's rather short. So coming into this as a traditional horror fan here for the oogety-boogety boo scares may leave you a tad underwhelmed, as its story is rather simplistic. The film, however, not only soars with its protagonist: where a simple mewling or quizzical look shatters my heart; but manages to relish and work around its low budget to good effect in order to create a more melancholic piece akin to "Let's Scare Jessica To Death" (Junta Juleil's Culture Shock has a wonderful piece on "Melancholic Horror" I can highly recommend). It's little things which come together: the humans' faces are never seen, for they are not people, but presences in Indy's life; the darkness of the well-lived in house feels rich and detailed; and the dubbed dialogue is well hidden but allows (apparently) the makers of the film to have been there to give commands to the dog.
It's, at its heart, a film about how terminal illness consumes you and pushes away those who love you the most: all of their love in the world cannot stop the inevitability of death. I wanted to give Indy a hug at the end. It's a melancholic, well made little allegory and a darkly human (hah) character focused 2-hander in a cabin. Lovable stuff.
I cried at the final lines of the human.
Also Bandit is a fucking excellent boy also doing his best, and deserves better