Reviews are starting to pour in for Scott Derrickson's sequel Black Phone 2. And they're praising the film's tonal shift and apparent magic trick after painting itself into a corner at the end of The Black Phone.
Here's a snippet from the Variety review:
Derrickson has no choice but to adapt, which he does quite impressively, since the killer’s now dead. With help from a mystical black phone on the wall of his basement cell, Finney Blake (Mason Thames, star of this year’s live-action “How to Train Your Dragon”) offed the man who abducted him in the first movie. He teamed up with the Grabber’s restless victims to vanquish the twisted kidnapper. So what’s a sequel supposed to do? Though it looks like “The Black Phone” (which was adapted from a short story by Stephen King’s son, Joe Hill) may have painted itself into a corner, Derrickson and co-writer C. Robert Cargill suggest the Grabber is now tormenting the Blake family from beyond the grave.
Basically, The Gabber is the new Freddy Krueger. And I'm totally here for it!