- Directed by: Scott Derrickson
- Written by: Joe Hill, Scott Derrickson, C. Robert Cargill
- Stars: Ethan Hawke, Mason Thames, Madeline McGraw
- Run Time: 1 Hour, 54 Minutes
- Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DdR-gzFZoDk
Spoiler-Free Judgment Zone
Four years later, Finn and Gwen are back and struggling with the trauma of the previous movie. The Grabber is back too, sort of. They, along with a few new friends, all go to a camp where they get snowed in and scary stuff happens. This seemed like a bit of a reach to make a second movie, but here it is. It’s not too bad, but the story is on the weak side, and we weren’t very pleased with it overall.
Spoilery Synopsis
It’s 1957 in the Rocky Mountains. Hope stands in a very remote payphone in the mountains. She talks to the person on the other end about a dream; she got the phone number from her dream. The call gets creepy and she walks away. Credits roll as we see action shots of many icy cold places.
It’s now 1982, about four years after the first movie, and we watch Finn beat up a kid on the playground. The other kid picked on Finn for the stories about him killing a serial killer. Gwen thinks all the fighting is bad. Ernesto likes Gwen, and he wants her to go see Duran Duran with him.
That night, Finn has a flashback to his time with The Grabber; he’s still not completely over it.
We cut to what appears to be a children’s camp in the past and then someone brutally killed children in the snow. Gwen has nightmares and sleepwalks; she’s not over it either.
In the morning, Ernesto brings Gwen some king of Tarot-like cards. She’s got a “spooky” reputation at school, and he thinks that’s pretty cool.
Gwen has another dream, and this time, she answers the Black Phone, and it’s Hope from 1957 that we saw earlier. The dream told her to call here. Gwen knows who that was; it was her mother calling from a youth camp.
Later, Gwen does more research. She finds Camp Alpine Lake; it’s a real place, and she wants to go. Their father knows about it, since their mother worked there.
Finn, Gwen, and Ernesto get jobs at the camp and drive there. The camp is pretty remote, and it snows all the way there. They are met there by Mando and Mustang; the camp’s been cancelled until the storm passes, and they’re the only ones who have shown up.
Finn hears the payphone ringing. “I’m sorry but I can’t help you.” Still, it’s very insistent. It’s the Grabber, Meanwhile, Gwen has dreams of dead people breaking into her cabin. Gwen then talks about her dreams and Finn’s phone calls with Ernesto.
In the morning, they talk to Mando about their mother, and he remembers her. Finn gets a call from a little boy who doesn’t remember anything. “We weren’t supposed to be here.”
Gwen finds out that Barbara and Kenneth, the people who run the camp, don’t like her. Gwen dreams about her mother getting a similar phone call to the one Finn got. Finney, on the other hand, talks to The Grabber on the phone and talks about what he wants. The Grabber wants revenge for what Finn did to him.
Meanwhile, Gwen gets picked up in her dream by The Grabber and thrown around the room. Mando, Mustang, Ernesto, and the others all see this happen.
The whole camp group gets together; this isn’t their first experience with weirdness. Gwen tells how the three boys died, and Mando recognizes all of it. The Grabber used to be a worker there when Gwen’s mother was there. Mando has been looking for the dead children’s bodies for decades. The Grabber got his start here at camp; he had his first kills here.
Mando is alone later when he gets a call over the radio from The Grabber. Suddenly, the lights go out. He goes to talk to Finn.
In the morning, they all go out to the frozen lake to clear the surface and look for the three boys’ bodies. They spend all day and don’t find anything.
Gwen dreams of her mother getting kidnapped by The Grabber. And she sees that it wasn’t suicide, The Grabber killed her. He then starts chasing Gwen all over the house and outside as well. He sabotages Mando out on the ice and really messes up Gwen, who is asleep in her cabin.
The boys yell for Gwen to fight back, and, in the dream, she does. She takes charge, realizing she’s the powerful one here.
Mando says he found Felix, one of the dead boys under the ice. Terrence, Gwen and Finn’s father, shows up in a snowplow to rescue them, but Gwen insists that they stay. She tells Terrence that his wife didn’t kill himself; The Grabber got her. She was onto the killer because of her dreams, and he found out.
In the morning, they all go out to the lake and continue to look for bodies. It gets dark with no luck.
Gwen falls asleep and sees The Grabber coming at her on ice skates. He gets Kenneth and Barbara, who totally had it coming. He attacks Finn next, who also fights back.
Gwen, in the dream, brings back The Grabber’s three victims to fight him. She whacks the killer with his own ac and then tears his mask off. With the bodies found, he’s powerless. They end up dumping him a hole in the lake, and the other ghosts drag him to the bottom.
Mando calls the dead boys’ parents for closure. On the way out, the phone rings, and Gwen gets to talk to her mother again. She says Gwen doesn’t have a curse; this is all a good thing.
Brian’s Commentary
So The Grabber is basically Feddy now, able to manipulate and attack from within a dream. Gwen could fight back in much the same way. They killed the baddie in the previous film, so they had to do something to bring him back; the “Freddy” stuff didn’t work for me, though.
No one got hypothermia from being in the water of a frozen lake? Actually, other than some injuries, no one died in the film at all, at least not in the present day.
It’s a very COLD movie. The scenery is dark and atmospheric, with every shot demonstrating just how cold it is in the mountains. The acting is fine, the setting is amazing, and the plot is thin, but workable. It really goes into the PTSD and trauma that the survivors of the first movie feel; the supernatural stuff almost feels like an interruption of the moody stuff.
I think it was probably better than the first one, which I found to be pretty forgettable.
Kevin’s Commentary
It pleases me that they brought back the same actors for Finn and Gwen, who were about 13 in the first movie and about 17 here.
I guess it would make a kind of sense that The Grabber would be able to exploit the supernatural channels himself that were used against him in the first movie.
The first movie was pretty forgettable. I had to look up our previous review for a refresher. I have no doubt I’ll be filing this one away too. I thought it drags and the stakes didn’t engross me much. And like Brian said, the Freddy vs Dream Warriors stuff didn’t work for me either. I’m going to go with liking it a bit less than the first one.
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