BETWEEN DREAD AND HORROR
The Black
Phone 2, which
premiered at Fantastic Fest on September 20, 2025, was released in the United
States by Universal Pictures on October 7. Directed by Scott Derrickson, this
production is a sequel based on a short story by author Joe (Hill) King, son of
the King of Horror, Stephen King. The 2022 horror phenomenon The Black Phone
grossed over $160 million worldwide and received high praise from critics,
establishing the Grabber as a new icon of the genre. The horror themes used in
the first film primarily revolved around jump-scares and a serial killer
profile targeting teenagers. In this sequel, however, the supernatural element
is more central. Writer-producer C. Robert Cargill notes that the story's roots
are drawn from "our childhoods and what it was like growing up in the '70s
and '80s"; examining the film's core horror themes, we indeed see the
director drawing from this inspiration, with the Grabber interacting with
Gwen's dreams in a sort of Freddy Krueger-like way, reminiscent of A
Nightmare on Elm Street.
Four years after defeating the
killer known as The Grabber, Finney and his psychically gifted sister Gwen find
themselves trapped at a cursed winter camp that harbors the spirits of the killer's
first victims. Gwen must uncover the dark secret connecting her family's past
to The Grabber's horror.
Stars; Ethan Hawke, Mason
Thames, Madeleine McGraw, Demián Bichir, Jeremy Davies, and Miguel Mora.
THE ARCHETYPAL ECHO OF TRAUMA
The Black
Phone 2 elevates
the Grabber character into a supernatural threat, moving horror beyond a simple
mechanism of suspense to become a persistent reflection of existential
trauma. Finn, the survivor, attempts to overcome the horror he experienced
by suppression and numbing, unknowingly mimicking his father’s toxic coping
mechanisms. This situation can be read within the context of depth
psychology, as established by Carl Gustav Jung, the founder of
analytical psychology; by denying his trauma, Finn allows his own Shadow
Archetype to grow, illustrating how external fear reflects his internal
turmoil. In contrast, his sister, Gwen, embraces this trauma like a gift. Her
ability to answer the ringing phone in her nightmares stands in opposition to
the philosophies of Friedrich Nietzsche's Will to Power and Arthur
Schopenhauer's 'Will'. For Gwen, this power is not a destructive blind
Will, but a tool for confronting fate and healing the past. This dualism
between the characters makes the film not just a horror story, but a
philosophical exploration of personal salvation.
On a
philosophical level, Finn’s attempts to suppress trauma interact with the
central philosophical concept of the Absurd, as coined by the French
writer and philosopher Albert Camus (especially in The Myth of
Sisyphus and The Stranger). The Grabber's return from death to
invade Gwen's dreams shows the young protagonists in a continuous and hopeless
conflict with an irrational, meaningless universe. The unreliable, flickering
nature of Gwen's dreams and the Super 8 footage transports Immanuel
Kant's distinction between the noumenon (the thing-in-itself) and
the phenomenon (the world as it appears) into the cinematic realm. As
the characters feel the pressure of the Grabber on their Mode of
Experiencing Reality (Phenomenon), the director specifically raises the
question: "Is reality merely the sum of experiences in our
consciousness?" This is a fundamental question addressed by the German
philosopher Edmund Husserl, founder of the school of phenomenology,
proving that The Black Phone 2 offers an exploration of the limits of
perception as much as it offers terror. Director Scott Derrickson's most daring
decision in this sequel is the use of cinematography as not just a nostalgic
reference, but an existential commentary tool. The return to analog film
formats like Super 8 and Super 16 by the director and cinematographer
Pär M. Ekberg forms the basis of a cinematic language built upon the fragility
of Reality. The shaky, grainy, imperfect image used during Gwen’s dreams and
supernatural encounters, in contrast to the cold perfection of digital,
reflects the chaotic and unreliable texture of the subconscious. The camera functions
less as a recorder of a mere plot and more as a transmitter of the
hallucinatory, distorted perception left by trauma. However, the extended
duration dedicated to Gwen's dream sequences and the intense, music-heavy
cinematic language used in these moments begin to carry an aesthetic risk.
These scenes, by veering toward the dynamism of a music video, risk undermining
the deep cinematic language established by Paul Ricœur’s three-fold mimesis
of time and narrative, inviting the audience instead to a visual spectacle.
The film's
most powerful visual signature lies in the transformation of the Grabber. The
mask, created by costume and makeup designers (Harrell and Penman), is no
longer a prop but becomes a permanent, cursed part of the face, allowing the
character to transition from a mere killer identity to an iconic statue of
societal punishment and pure evil. The Grabber is no longer a figure, but a
cinematic sign; the embodied form of undying rage and suppressed trauma. The
profound cinematic experience created by Scott Derrickson and his team goes
beyond the simple expectations of the genre. Every detail of the film—Finn’s
trauma-reflecting bomber jacket, the flare of light on Gwen’s purple coat, and
the inscribed past in Mando’s tattoos—functions as a visual text. Ultimately,
the camera of The Black Phone 2 not only draws the viewer into a horror
story; it confronts them with the constantly moving, flickering, and unreliable
consciousness of a traumatic experience. This unique narrative methodology makes the film one of the most
significant aesthetic events in contemporary horror cinema and is the clearest
proof of the intellectual vision behind it.
EFE TEKSOY
REFERENCES
Camus, Albert. The Myth of
Sisyphus. Translated by Justin O'Brien. New York: Vintage Books, 1955.
Derrickson, Scott and Cargill,
C. Robert. The Black Phone 2: Director's Commentary and Production
Interviews.
Hill, Joe. 20th Century
Ghosts (The short story "The Black Phone" therein). New York:
William Morrow, 2005.
Husserl, Edmund. The Paris
Lectures. Translated by Peter Koestenbaum. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff,
1964.
Jung, Carl Gustav. The
Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious. Translated by R.F.C. Hull.
Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1968.
Kant, Immanuel. Critique of
Pure Reason. Edited and Translated by Paul Guyer and Allen W. Wood.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998.
Nietzsche, Friedrich. The
Will to Power. Translated by Walter Kaufmann and R.J. Hollingdale. New
York: Vintage Books, 1968.
Ricœur, Paul. Time and
Narrative, Volume 1: The Mimesis of Narrative. Translated by Kathleen
McLaughlin and David Pellauer. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1984.
Schopenhauer, Arthur. The
World as Will and Representation, Vol. 1. Translated by E.F.J. Payne. New
York: Dover Publications, 1966.
