Review
Pop Culture Happy Hour
Review
Pop Culture Happy Hour
[THEME MUSIC]
GLEN WELDON: 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/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 Crucchiola. She's a writer and producer and the host of the podcast, Feeling Seen, on Maximum Fun. Welcome back, Jordan.
JORDAN CRUCCHIOLA: Hello. Thank you so much for having me at this reunion special.
WELDON: Exactly, because this is the OG crew. We reviewed the first one. Also with us is Kristen Meinzer. She co-hosts The Nightly on Hatch+. Hey, Kristen.
KRISTEN MEINZER: Hey, great to be back with you two.
WELDON: 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. Black Phone 2 is written and directed by the same folks behind the original. It's in theaters now. Kristen, if I may paraphrase the Steve Miller Band, as I'm often so want to do, abra abracadabra, did this reach out and grab ya?
[LAUGHTER]
MEINZER: Oh, my God. OK. As with the original, I really liked the look of this movie. It has that Super 8, faded Polaroid sort of feeling.
WELDON: Sure.
MEINZER: I liked 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, Glen, 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.
WELDON: More black phones.
MEINZER: 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 time, it's really folded in. And the movie overall has almost more of a Nightmare on Elm Street feel--
WELDON: Sure.
MEINZER: --versus a--
CRUCCHIOLA: This is Black Phone-- Dream Warriors for sure.
MEINZER: Yes!
WELDON: It's a Dream Warriors, yeah.
MEINZER: 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.
WELDON: OK. That's interesting. Jordan, what'd you think?
CRUCCHIOLA: 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 as 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 in 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 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, 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.
WELDON: OK, 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. Give me some Stilton and walnuts by the fire. Melt some Gruyere over my French onion soup. I'll take the cheese. I'm not going to complain about it.
[LAUGHTER]
WELDON: I will say, though, that if one of the things you liked about that first film was its, 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 about how The Grabber gets his power, how to take away The Grabber's power, which is where, for me, the cheesiness really in. And all those very clunky monologues that poor Madeleine McGraw as Gwen, who's great--
CRUCCHIOLA: There's exposition happening in this movie, for sure. There are moments of downloading.
WELDON: It's also the way it's delivered. Like, she gets settled with this lawyer 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--
CRUCCHIOLA: It's never gotten better.
WELDON: It's never gotten better.
MEINZER: Yeah.
WELDON: This 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.
CRUCCHIOLA: That's very fair. I actually like that about it. But that's a very good parallel.
WELDON: 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?
MEINZER: I feel what you're saying. And there were a couple of moments where I definitely said, oh, this is Scooby Doo now.
WELDON: Oh, OK. Yep.
MEINZER: You know, now it's time for Daphne to explain what is really behind the grandfather clock.
CRUCCHIOLA: There's such YA elements about this. Oh, my gosh!
WELDON: This is maybe my thing.
MEINZER: Yes, yes. 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.
CRUCCHIOLA: Thank goodness the mask is so effective on The Grabber. I had an exchange 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 where, like, we're not all rallying around the same things. And like, who besides kind of Art the Clown--
WELDON: Sure.
CRUCCHIOLA: --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 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 Finney to Gwen. I think that's a nice refreshing. I really like their dynamic as brother and sister. I like--
MEINZER: Oh, yeah.
CRUCCHIOLA: --the arc of him--
MEINZER: Totally agreed.
CRUCCHIOLA: --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 going to do that at the end of the first Black Phone, I would have been like, I don't think this writer and director 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.
WELDON: Yeah. I mean, Kristen, you 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 ice that I certainly hope will get adapted into an Olympic couples figure skating routine at some point because I do think--
[LAUGHTER]
WELDON: --it would be improved by sequins, 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 I 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. I thought it was mostly in control of those references, using them, expanding on them, not just kind of drafting off them. How did you guys feel?
MEINZER: 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 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 too A, or too B, or too C. But this kind of captures all of the complications of having a sibling who maybe reacts to trauma 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--
CRUCCHIOLA: Yeah. LAUGHS
MEINZER: --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.
CRUCCHIOLA: 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.
MEINZER: Yes.
WELDON: 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 too much salt in her saltiness. Like--
CRUCCHIOLA: 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.
WELDON: I love the '80s, sure, but it's also, like, it leeches 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?
MEINZER: And also, keep in mind her character is supposed to be, like, 15. And--
WELDON: Yeah.
MEINZER: --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?
CRUCCHIOLA: So true.
WELDON: You're right.
CRUCCHIOLA: 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 did you need to do-- just because, 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 sweaters. 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.
WELDON: Maybe that's it.
CRUCCHIOLA: 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.
WELDON: No, sure. And I shouldn't be sitting here strunk and White's elements of style. her curse game. I guess, that's the answer.
CRUCCHIOLA: It clunks for me. It did in the first one. And it did with this--
WELDON: It does clunk.
CRUCCHIOLA: --that we're not proving anything by saying that you remember we said "radical" at a point in time all the time.
MEINZER: [LAUGHS] Yes. But I will say, again, I do think the swearing is very funny at moments. The swearing is really fun.
CRUCCHIOLA: Yes. And you're so right about the elevating the swear game. That is a process we all must go through.
WELDON: That's certainly true.
MEINZER: And then we pull it back as we realize--
WELDON: Eh, some of us do.
MEINZER: --we can swear better than this. I have a better vocabulary than this.
CRUCCHIOLA: We do when we're on NPR. We do when we're on NPR.
[LAUGHTER]
MEINZER: 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 in a 4x4 feet, where you're packed in together like sardines.
CRUCCHIOLA: OK, actually, great fact-check question-- is it routine for, like, a bunking cabin to be the size of a hotel lobby?
WELDON: I remember that.
MEINZER: Yeah, it was huge!
CRUCCHIOLA: It was huge! There's, like, a full sprint through it at one point that takes a while. It was enormous!
MEINZER: Yeah.
WELDON: And also the logistics of placing a lonely phonebooth that close to a lake, which is gonna flood.
CRUCCHIOLA: It's so close.
WELDON: That's not a thing you do.
MEINZER: And, like, is this a climate change issue where it used to be further away from the shore?
CRUCCHIOLA: Yes. Has there been encroachment on the shore?
MEINZER: Yes.
CRUCCHIOLA: Is that what we're talking about here?
MEINZER: 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.
WELDON: Absolutely.
CRUCCHIOLA: And they nailed that. They nailed the one true phone.
MEINZER: Yes.
CRUCCHIOLA: 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--
MEINZER: [LAUGHS]
WELDON: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
CRUCCHIOLA: --that a camp would one day pop up around? And no one's like, yeah, it's crazy that the phone's there. It doesn't work anymore. They're like, oh yeah, that phone, it'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?
WELDON: It is positioned in the landscape like a Tardis. And I think that's probably the answer.
[LAUGHTER]
CRUCCHIOLA: It is Bill and Ted's phonebooth.
WELDON: It totally is. It totally is.
CRUCCHIOLA: [LAUGHS]
WELDON: 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?
WELDON: 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?
CRUCCHIOLA: I'm going to go with The Woman in Cabin 10--
MEINZER: [LAUGHS]
CRUCCHIOLA: --which is now streaming on Netflix. A 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 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, Guy Pearce dripping with sinister feelings--
MEINZER: Oh, he's so smarmy.
CRUCCHIOLA: So smarmy.
MEINZER: So smarmy.
CRUCCHIOLA: He's a human spoiler. He's like Stellan Skarsgard. You see the guy. You're like, bad intentions.
MEINZER: [LAUGHS]
CRUCCHIOLA: The Woman in Cabin 10, give it a spin on the old Netflix machine.
WELDON: All right, that's The Woman in Cabin 10 on Netflix. Thank you, Jordan. Kristen Meinzer, what do you-- what's making you happy this week?
MEINZER: 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 Whisky.
CRUCCHIOLA: Oh.
MEINZER: 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 Whisky, 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. 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 Whisky.
CRUCCHIOLA: Oh, my God, I want to watch this. This is great.
WELDON: Arthur's Whisky, and that, I guess, is streaming wherever you can stream things, yes?
MEINZER: Yes, it is.
WELDON: 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. Schulz-- The Greatest Comic Strip of All Time. Do not sleep on this book. It's written by comics historian Mark Evanier. And it walks you through the evolution of the strip era by era, as the Swifties would say.
MEINZER: Oh.
CRUCCHIOLA: Huh.
WELDON: It places all the changes that Schulz made over the years in context. And it 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.
MEINZER: Existential, I would say.
WELDON: Existential. Exactly, Kristen. It 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. It is coming out in time for the holidays. And it will make a great gift for that one nerd in your family. That is The Essential Peanuts by Charles M. Schulz-- 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. 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. Kristen Meinzer, Jordan Crucchiola, it was great getting the old gang together again. Thanks for being here.
MEINZER: Thanks, guys.
CRUCCHIOLA: See you at Black Phone 3.
MEINZER: Yes.
WELDON: Oh god. This episode was produced by Liz Metzger, Janae Morris, and Mike Katz, and 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.
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