Trick-or-treating in Montrose is a postcode lottery. Some streets receive a visit and others don’t (mine is in the second group). But the adult Halloween movie is a big deal in the film-distribution world. Isn’t it fortunate that Halloween falls on a Friday this year and the Playhouse has an above-par horror to offer as a treat? “Black Phone 2” (Universal), showing now at the Montrose Playhouse, boldly adds to the exceptional year that 2025 is proving to be for the genre.
The best known star in the film, Ethan Hawke, is masked throughout. He plays the baddie, “The Grabber,” who merrily tells us, “I am a bottomless pit of sin.” The story is essentially about the reliability of nightmares experienced by Gwen, a sleepwalking teen-ager with extraordinary powers. “You have dreams and stuff and they tell you things,” she is told towards the beginning. She communicates with three boys who are lying dead underneath a frozen lake at a Christian summer camp in wintry Colorado. She, her brother Finney, and wannabe boyfriend Ernesto get jobs there as trainee counsellors as a ruse to hunt for the dead boys; but upon their arrival they find that the camp is snowed in—news reports call it “the worst storm since ‘forty-six”—and the campers never arrived. A phone box containing a black phone mysteriously appears at multiple points during the film. When the phone rings, sometimes we are party to both sides of the conversation, sometimes only one; sometimes the box is sealed so that the person inside cannot immediately leave, and sometimes it isn’t; sometimes we hear nothing but white noise, like the scratching sound at the end of an L.P. after the track we are listening to ends; sometimes, Finney just answers and says, “I’m sorry but I can’t help.” Gwen communes with the dead (the boys and her mother, who died from an apparent suicide). But Finney is goaded by the Grabber, for reasons which become clear later. “Have you got it yet?” the Grabber asks, “No? Fine. I’ll just tell you Finney. What I want is this, I want to purge you in ways that you can’t even imagine. You will pay for what you did to me.”
Several of the film’s big ideas are set up in the first few moments by a super-violent playground fight between Finney and a new pupil at school. Finney understands his objective—“The more blood the better. For the audience.” The sizeable wounds Finney inflicts on the new pupil’s face foretell both the dead boys’ facial wounds and the scratched face about which Gwen frequently dreams; the scene also functions to establish Finney’s bad-boy credentials. I wasn’t convinced by the decision to cast laid-back actor Mason Thames—who doesn’t look like he ever hit anyone in his life—as bullyboy Finney. A tougher, rougher, less likeable actor would not have been so overwhelmed by the sensational Madeleine McGraw, who plays Gwen. Ms McGraw has the ability to project calmness, purpose, and grit at exactly the right time. There are many scenes just of her staring—unblinking—into the camera; the audience can be in no doubt that she is really experiencing what she claims and that her nocturnal meanderings are more than mere sleepwalking.
True, there is something rather clichéd about the male teen-ager with the alcoholic father who solves his problems by smoking dope. And both the father and the owner of the camp, who are about the same age, have a patronising attitude of “I’m the man and I know what’s best for you,” laced with a hefty dose of pious judgement (a somewhat tedious Hollywood staple). For instance, Gwen has been put into a dorm on her own but sneaks into the boys’ dorm on the first night. “I notice you slept with the boys. I could lose my camp license for that. Don’t do it again,” the owner says. And then, reminding them of the camp’s pedigree, “None of you listed churches on your application—so, why are you here?”
There are a number of top-notch scenes which elevate “Black Phone 2” above the humdrum. For example, at one point Gwen is experiencing one of her tortured nightmares, grappling with something in the kitchen that the rest of the cast cannot see. In fact, she is being jerked around the kitchen from pillar to post by the Grabber. An exceptionally complex shot of the long table being cleared of all its kitchen equipment by a flying Gwen is amazing. And towards the end, an atmospheric, exciting, high-speed sequence on the frozen lake involving the whole cast brings to a close multiple loose ends at the same time.
“Black Phone 2” is a movie for the big screen; the contrasting mood and colours become more vivid (as does the audio from the industry-leading Dolby Atmos surround sound that equips the Playhouse). It feels like an old-fashioned movie—in a good way—and a far cry from the Netflix-style psychological horror which is the mainstay of twenty-twenties programming. As the film develops, and the ability of the black phone to communicate between the living and the dead is etched in our consciousness, the pleas of the boys become yet more determined. “Help us, please help us,” they beg. “Tell me how I can help you,” asks Gwen. “Find us. Find us,” they reply.
Adam Poole
31st October 2025
If you are interested in viewing this screening, please book your tickets here
