Black Phone 2 (18, 114 mins)
Verdict: Dial M for middling
If you can ignore his daft name, the Grabber is one of the creepiest characters in modern horror. He wears hideous, leering masks. He pulls children off the street. And then… let’s just say there’s a whole load of graves beneath his home.
And now this character, played with grisly relish by Ethan Hawke, is back and crueller than ever.
But — hang on — didn’t the Grabber die at the end of the first Black Phone (2021)?
Well, yes. Though if you saw that movie, you’d know that its down-and-dirty 1970s vibes were leavened by a touch of the supernatural. The spirits of the Grabber’s previous victims used a phone to call his latest kidnappee, Finney Blake (Mason Thames), and help him escape.
He’s behind you: Gwen (Madeleine McGraw) hides from the Grabber (Ethan Hawke) in the sequel to 2021 horror hit The Black Phone
Now, in Black Phone 2, it’s four years later, and both Finn and his delightfully foul-mouthed younger sister Gwen (Madeleine McGraw) are having visions of the Grabber. Or perhaps that should be visions within visions within visions.
Because one of the problems with this sequel is that it tries to impose an entire cosmology on what was previously a simple story.
Gwen can now, it seems, share dreams with a decades-ago version of her dead mum, who experienced the Grabber’s earliest crimes at a lakeside camp.
Nuisance call: Gwen (Madeleine McGraw) on the titular telephone in Black Phone 2
Cooking up trouble: Ethan Hawke’s Grabber can now attack people – children – in their own dreams. Which complicates things.
The dead Grabber can now attack people, Freddy Krueger-style, in their own dreams. And Finn can… oh, none of it really makes sense, so why bother?
It’s all just setup for a battle between good and evil in the snowy Colorado Mountains, which is well done as these things go, if disappointing when compared to the original movie.
The Grabber, you feel, has reached for too much this time.
Black Phone 2 is in cinemas now.
Gabby’s Dollhouse: The Movie (U, 98 mins)
Verdict: Feline fine
If you’re a seven-year-old girl, or the parent of a seven-year-old girl, then presumably you’ve watched countless hours of the streaming show Gabby’s Dollhouse.
Whereas if, like me, you’re a 41-year-old man whose interests include football and the pub, this is a cultural phenomenon that has entirely passed you by.
Until now. Because a Gabby’s Dollhouse movie is out, and it’s being advertised on every bus and billboard from here to… er, Cat Francisco.
Hello, Kitty: Laila Lockhart Kraner is Gabby, owner of the magic dollhouse where adventures (with cats) happen, in Dreamworks’ big screen version of streaming hit Gabby’s Dollhouse
For that is the setting of this children’s film, a feline version of San Francisco that, for some reason, doesn’t feature the drug and homelessness problems of the real thing.
Instead, everything here is sparkles! Real-human Gabby (the ebullient Laila Lockhart Kraner) uses her sparkle powers to shrink down to the size of her model cats and go on animated adventures with them. It’s a bit like Toy Story, if the toys were all cutesy kitties covered in glitter and stickers and hearts.
But reality bites in the form of the great Kristen Wiig, playing a ramped-down Cruella de Vil type who takes the eponymous dollhouse and keeps all its kitties as display pieces. It’s up to Gabby to rescue them, while learning a little about growing up along the way.
Purr-fectly awful: Kristen Wiig is up to no good, hilariously, in Gabby’s Dollhouse
Juvenile devotees of the show will lap this up. But adults won’t have a terrible time, either. There are some decent jokes for all ages, most of them acted out by Wiig. In fact, her yoga scene, opposite a severe-looking Devon Rex cat, adds another star to my rating all by itself – or a thousand-million sparkles if you’re a seven-year-old girl.
Gabby’s Dollhouse is in cinemas now.
