The Black Phone 2 (Spoilers)
Agree so hard with this post: https://www.tumblr.com/theforestbunch/799034019947954176/it-doesnt-bother-me-that-gwens-psychic-powers
💬 4 🔁 38 ❤️ 318 · It doesn’t bother me that Gwen’s psychic powers are the driving force of the plot and what gets them to Alpine Lake rath
If I could go off on a tangent... but be sure to comment/reblog/like on the original.
Perhaps I need another watch, but I was so sure that Finn was getting calls from other spirits asking for help, then he was going to pick up the phone at the end of the film and say something like, "This is Finn. How can I help you?" Only better, less stupid sounding...
But I suppose the implication is that it was always the Grabber trying to reach him and figuring he couldn't until Finn was in an area where he (the Grabber) was stronger. In fact, it could be interpreted that it was really Gwen/Hope's power all along that they were 'sharing' with Finn (intentionally or inadvertently), and Finn's proximity to the Grabber made him like a conduit of a sort, so maybe he doesn't have 'abilities' per se but rather sensitivity.
In other words, Finn's time answering phone calls is probably over. Which, ok, I get that and the guy deserves a frickin' break, but that's not really what resonated with people in the first film, I think...
They've basically made it more of Gwen's story as a whole; and that might be the way they continue if there's a third. She's also technically a Grabber-survivor now, and the ghosts clearly reach out to her, even since the first film, so she's pretty much set.
Gwen deserves her story, too, but Finn needed and deserved more closure than that. Finn's past literally came back to haunt him.
Again, we (I?) love Gwen. We (I?) like seeing the Grabber put these kids through hell and have it culminate into the bastard getting his just deserts (shut up, Spellcheck, 'deserts' is correct). But that's not really what carried over from the short story, the whole point of the darn thing in my opinion.
The Black Phone gave prior victims their names, voices, and active retribution through a survivor that very easily could have shared the same fate. A child had to step up to a brutal circumstance, and he did so with the aid of others with 'more experience'. We used our imaginations to fill in the blanks of the horrors to come. In the film, there were key chilling details about the 70s, like the early days of 'stranger danger,' the 'freezer death traps,' and utilizing the now-gone cord of the telephone as a lifeline.
The road was perfectly paved to examine the trauma of a young person after something very real and terrifying, which probably isn't examined very much with boys? I dunno...
Most of this was somewhat pushed aside in favor of seeing a young lady getting torn to shreds, having a fling, and coming into her supernatural power in order to help aka 'save' past victims. The internal struggle we could have seen with her concerns of 'losing her mind' were kind of dashed by showing that the family member who is alluded to as having also fought this battle was killed rather than trying to find a way to escape this pain she didn't fully understand how to handle.
Hope could have given Gwen a hug in another dream or something, passing on her own experiences to her child so she wouldn't 'fall into darkness.'
Finn could have reconciled that his past will always be a part of him, but he gets to decide what to do with it and use is as a positive force to help others.
Don't get me started on what we could have had with Ernesto....
Well, we'll see what the future has to offer. Honestly, though, I'm a little worried they're going to use the third to examine the Grabber's backstory. It makes sense, yes, but it takes a huge axe to another part of the Grabber that made him so terrifying - using our brains to fill in the gaps or just not understand how he could be this way.
This was a reblog, but dumbass site changes…
