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Video Game News, Reviews, and Walkthroughs - IGN

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It: Welcome to Derry - Episode 4 Review: “The Great Swirling Apparatus of Our Planet's Function” meaningfully moves forward every one of Welcome to Derry’s storylines, packs a wallop on the horror front, and reveals some interesting new details about Pennywise’s […]

[Original post on ign.com]

<section class="article-page"><img src="https://assets-prd.ignimgs.com/2025/11/14/blake-cameron-james-01-1763163951844.jpg" /><section></section><p><strong>Spoilers follow for It: Welcome to Derry Episodes 1-4.</strong></p><section></section><p>So far, I’ve found the scariest thing about <a href="https://www.ign.com/articles/it-welcome-to-derry-season-premiere-review"><u>It: Welcome to Derry</u></a> by a significant margin to be the <a href="https://www.ign.com/articles/it-welcome-to-derry-episode-2-review"><u>downward trend</u></a> of the <a href="https://www.ign.com/articles/it-welcome-to-derry-episode-3-review"><u>episodes’ quality</u></a>. “The Great Swirling Apparatus of Our Planet's Function” turns things around for the series at the season’s critical midpoint, with some of the best drama and horror we’ve seen from Welcome to Derry yet turning the temperature up to a rolling boil.</p><p></p><p>Armed with the photos from last week’s odious cemetery setpiece, Welcome to Derry’s core group of kids (assuming no more slate-wipes like the premiere) - Lilly, Ronnie, Will and Rich - march into Chief Bowers’ office to find the dollar store ghoul children they’d captured have disappeared from their pictures. Even though the clown’s still visible, Bowers quickly sends the kids packing, which should come as little surprise given how little this guy seems interested in solving crimes in Derry. Peter Outerbridge has done nice work to this point playing Bowers’ simmering rage in moments like these, far more in control of himself than his grandson (Losers’ Club nemesis Henry Bowers) will go on to be, and the tighter he gets wound by the escalating events in town, the scarier he’s getting. </p><section></section><p>That tension carries Charlotte’s conversation with him about Hank Grogan’s treatment in custody, which touches on Charlotte’s experiences as a civil rights freedom fighter in the South. Outerbridge and Taylour Paige engage in a polite-but-terse back and forth about the racial dynamics at play here that gives both performers an opportunity to have two conversations at once, and Bowers’ unconvincing insistence that Derry “isn’t the South” and that Hank Grogan’s getting the same fair shake as a white person would only adds to the sinister atmosphere. That’s underlined when Charlotte does get to see Hank, as we learn that he was having an affair with a white woman in town at the time of the murders he’s accused of and terrified he’ll be lynched as a result. </p><p></p><p>Welcome to Derry has positioned Hank as pure good, so it’s worth us taking that fear to the bank. Stephen Rider turns in his best work of the season so far here, as Hank is overcome with emotion at Charlotte’s suggestion that his refusal to give his alibi is anything but a sacrifice to keep his family and his secret lover safe. With how acutely concerned Hank seems to be about that lover’s identity as it relates to everyone’s safety should the news get out (and it will), the smart money seems to be on that being the spouse of a Derry cop. Seems like the kind of thing that would make Chief Bowers totally snap if that sort of controversy came to his doorstep…</p><p></p><p>While Charlotte and Leroy are at odds over how much to get involved in Hank’s case, thanks to some smart deductive reasoning on Will’s part, the kids have figured out that It feeds on fear. Here, Welcome to Derry seeds a “<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chekhov%27s_gun"><u>Chekov’s gun</u></a>” bound to backfire on them in later episodes: Lilly gives each of her friends one of “Mommy’s little helpers”, her mom’s anxiety meds which Lilly thinks will keep the kids from feeling fear. Loose pills and Pennywise: a match made in Derry. I’m both excited and full of dread to see how Welcome to Derry’s going to pay this one off. It speaks to the overall narrative efficiency of “Planet’s Function”, both in how it looks back on threads from the first three episodes and provides meaningful updates, and in the dominoes it sets up for itself to knock down in the back half of the season.</p><section></section><p>As for the back half of this <em>episode</em>, once “Planet’s Function” gets done with its homework laying track for the rest of the season… it’s party time. The second half of “Planet’s Function” goes from strength to strength, starting with Will and Leroy’s encounter on the Kenduskeag River as Leroy puts in some effort to bond with Will as the school year starts to get away from both of them. Jovan Adepo and Blake Cameron James’ easy chemistry shines for what really feels like the first time here, as Leroy needles Will about a crush on Ronnie Grogan and gives him pointers on his fly fishing. As Leroy pops back to the car, Will’s pulled under the water by something wearing Leroy’s burned face, which in his frantic recap to his dad Will likens to how Leroy looked after a plane crash earlier in his career. This was another great example of how Welcome to Derry has been able to use these brushes with Pennywise to shade in details about the characters’ backstories, or fears, in a way that feels natural and satisfying. And Marge’s prank on Lilly gone wrong keeps that ball rolling in an eye-popping, delightfully Raimiesque fashion.</p><section>...the math starts to add up and this week, 2+2 = ew, ew, ew, ew.</section><p>Welcome to Derry’s 1960s setting and heavy emphasis on Americana leaves simpler archetypes and tropes like an unpopular girl who’s sensitive about her coke bottle glasses feeling quite potent, so when the camera lingers on Marge squirming over a nature film in class about parasites that live in the eyes of snails, the math starts to add up and this week, 2+2 = ew, ew, ew, ew. The “Pattycakes vs. Lilly” thread has felt under-cooked up to this point, and while I still don’t buy Marge’s turn on Lilly in exchange for popularity, it has at least led us to Welcome to Derry’s best gross-out moment yet. As Marge decides to back out of the prank and be honest with Lilly about her behavior, her eyes brutally <a href="https://www.reddit.com/media?url=https%3A%2F%2Fi.redd.it%2Ftbeurs2353dc1.jpeg"><u>Judge Doom</u></a> out of her head, sending Marge stumbling into the wood shop to bring this ocular omnishambles to an unforgettable conclusion. </p><p></p><p>Sure, Marge’s snail eyes have that terrible CG sheen so much of the scary stuff in Welcome to Derry has been the victim of, but the entire sequence is so nightmarish and arch to begin with that the authenticity of Matilda Lawler’s reactions carry the effects through. It is some Evil Dead shit of the highest order, and I’ve always got space in my heart for that. The episode could’ve ended right at that fever pitch, but instead, we’re treated to an extended flashback sequence that adds some intriguing new detail to the legend of Pennywise with a ton of flair, thanks to Dick Hallorann’s “shine.”</p><p></p><p>With Will’s attack fresh on his mind, Leroy grills both Hallorann and Shaw about the true nature of Operation Precept.. That gives Leroy a front row seat to Hallorann’s psychic interrogation of Taniel, a member of Derry’s Indigenous community and Rose’s nephew, as Hallorann seeks answers on the “beacons” or “pillars” connected to Pennywise buried under Derry. Hallorann finds himself in a dark void of back-lit doors (cool), doors which his grandmother’s ghostly voice has been urging him to keep closed (a nice nod to some <a href="https://youtu.be/UyBo4-REewU?si=y3QR1ffXHyhex9SI&t=162"><u>Hallorann family history</u></a> we learn in Doctor Sleep). Hallorann enters a memory of Taniel’s wherein his aunt Rose asks him to recount their tribe’s legend of The Galloo, their name for It. One level deeper in Taniel’s mind, the legend plays out as we see both It’s arrival on earth and how Rose and Taniel’s ancestors were the first to figure out how to counteract it. </p><p></p><p>Taniel’s story plays out at exciting pace, almost like a snappy, self-contained It short film to end the episode, and with an extra level of danger added by virtue of the fact that this is all being perceived in real-time by <em>Hallorann</em>. Last week’s episode saw Pennywise speak to him while he was shining, so for Hallorann to be bearing witness to such a sensitive chapter of It’s history while being psychically vulnerable gave the sequence a deep sense of unease, which the sound design reinforces nicely. The low-end warbles evoke Stanley Kubrick’s sound mix for The Shining while Hallorann and Danny were having visions. The information Hallorann gets from Taniel’s story also lends the nature of Operation Precept a touch more nuance and logical connection to Pennywise’s cosmological origins than I’d first anticipated. Welcome to Derry still has work to do to convince me that Operation Precept’s going to be worth our time, but at the very least, some of what Hallorann’s vision reveals gives it a stronger foundation.</p><p></p></section>

November 17, 2025 at 6:43 AM

Video Game News, Reviews, and Walkthroughs - IGN

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City of Balls Was the Original Title — And Somehow, Ball X Pit Got Even Weirder From There

<section class="article-page"><img src="https://assets-prd.ignimgs.com/2025/10/15/ballpitthumb-1760544873932.png" /><section></section><p>Ball X Pit is the latest obsession to grip gamers, a chaotic roguelite that mashes together the mechanics of games like Peggle, Diablo and Vampire Survivors to make something that's impossible to characterize, but is dangerously playable. Somehow it's the work of one man, Kenny Sun, a game developer from Brooklyn, NY who loves games like Vampire Survivors, Deep Rock Galactic Survivor and Blotch Arrow. We spoke to Sun to first of all, confirm how the hell we say the Ball x Pit out loud, and then to talk about how he created this moreish Frankenstein's monster of a game. </p><p></p><p>"It’s Ball Pit. Just Ball Pit. There’s no X," explains Sun. "It’s mostly a tribute to anime like Phantom Hunter. Also, X can mean fusion, which ties into the game’s theme." He also reveals that when he first had to choose a game name for Steam, it was City of Balls.</p><a href="https://assets-prd.ignimgs.com/2025/10/28/ballthumb-1761669954835.png"><img class="article-image-full-size" src="https://assets-prd.ignimgs.com/2025/10/28/ballthumb-1761669954835.png" title="undefined" /></a><p>"It started when I played a mobile brick-breaker roguelite a few years ago. I got hooked but didn’t like all the free-to-play elements. So I wanted to make a version without that — a buy-once experience. From there, it evolved through tons of iteration," Sun says, explaining the game's origin, and why he settled on building a farm as a key part of progressing through the game.</p><p></p><p>"I wanted something more visual and personal than just menus — something with identity. I liked the idea of little characters bouncing around a base. Plus, I did base-building in my last game, so it wasn’t a huge leap."</p><p></p><p>Some ideas didn't make the cut, but Sun hinted that at least a few could come back with updates to the game. </p><p></p><p>"I try not to waste work, so most ideas make it in. But one was a magma ball that left lava trails enemies would take damage from — once the game started scrolling, it didn’t make sense visually, so we cut it," he says, as for something we could see one day.</p><p></p><p>"I cut a pet system — you could bring pets into levels and they’d gain XP. It was fun but too much on top of character progression. There was even a monkey that jumped on enemies."</p><p></p><p>And Sun has already been making updates, listening to feedback from players and tweaking the mechanics to make quality of life improvements. "Hitboxes were misaligned, so I redid them. And I added luck protection for fishing — players didn’t like getting too many bad rolls in a row."</p><section></section><p></p><p>If you haven't played Ball X Pit yet (and you really should) we asked Sun for his top tip to give you a head start. </p><p></p><p>"Aim for the back of the board so the balls ricochet around — that’s key for damage," he advises. His personal favorite combo? "I like hemorrhage builds — combine it with area-of-effect stuff like lightning or ghost. Flash hits everything on screen."</p><p></p><p>His favorite villager? "The one whose balls bounce off the back. I love chaotic screens. Combine him with Cohabitants for double the balls — it’s wild."</p><p></p><p>Ball X Pit is out now on PC, Nintendo Switch, PS5, Xbox Series X and S, with a Nintendo 2 version on its way soon. As for future updates? </p><p></p><p>"I can say there’s more coming, but not what exactly," teases Sun. "The game’s done really well, and it feels right to give players a bit more."</p><p></p><p></p><section></section><p><em>Rachel Weber is the Senior Editorial Director of Games at IGN and an elder millennial. She's been a professional nerd since 2006 when she got her start on Official PlayStation Magazine in the UK, and has since worked for GamesIndustry.Biz, Rolling Stone and GamesRadar. She loves horror, horror movies, horror games, and French Bulldogs. Those extra wrinkles on her face are thanks to going time blind and staying up too late finishing every sidequest in RPGs like Fallout and Witcher 3.</em></p></section>

November 4, 2025 at 6:40 PM

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The 10 Scariest Moments in Movie History: From jump scares to simmering existential dread, here's how the scariest movies freak you out.

<section class="article-page"><img src="https://assets-prd.ignimgs.com/2025/10/16/cinefix-10scariestmoviemoments-blogroll-1760658481253.jpg" /><section></section><p>It’s a big, scary world out there, but that’s never stopped us from some additional big screen thrill-seeking. While some movies are scarier than the sum of their parts, we’re getting a little more granular with this list and breaking down individual moments...but right off the bat, there's a caveat. No moment exists in a vacuum; every scene is the product of the context laid down before it and the consequences that follow it. This might be doubly true for <em>scary</em> moments. A good scare needs the ingredients arranged correctly in front of it and the tension built, and a <em>great </em>scare will linger long after it’s left the screen. </p><p></p><p>And just so we’re on the same page from the jump, I’m not talking exclusively about horror movies here. Admittedly, most of this list will be made up of that spookiest of genres, but one of the great things about scary <em>moments</em> is that they can drop in when you least expect them. A truly scary movie moment can creep up in a dramatic chamber piece just as easily as it can in the middle of Slasherpalooza 7: The Blood Bath-ening...sometimes more so. </p><p></p><p>So for each of the categories in our taxonomic breakdown of individual scares on film, I want to focus on at least one that’s from a not-traditionally-considered-horror film. Now, with all that being said, let’s talk about scaring the shit out of an audience with the old reliable jump scare!</p><section></section><h2><strong>10. The Jump Scare</strong></h2><p>Built on an instantaneous release of tension, the jump scare is maybe the purest example of set-up and payoff that cinema has to offer. You can go back 100 years to find a good jump scare in The Phantom of the Opera, or maybe even the original horror movie – that train that people thought would run them over in the theater. There’s a beautiful simplicity to these that, when executed properly, give a dose of the unexpected just when you’re starting to think the coast is clear. Some more recent favorites are the boy in the attic in REC, panning around almost 360 before<a href="https://www.ign.com/videos/the-art-of-the-jump-scare"> … FUCK that kid…</a> the lawnmower scene in Sinister, making us quietly wait until <a href="https://www.ign.com/articles/best-movies-like-the-conjuring">… GOD DAMMIT what the…</a> there’s the famous Texas Switch of shock, luring us in with a kid running to his … SHIT he turned into a different guy…</p><p></p><p>Where non-horror movies are concerned, the old reliable jump scare is standing by to cash in a bit of tension between a mayor and a good cop when a fake Batman slams into the window in <a href="https://www.ign.com/videos/the-dark-knights-best-line-of-dialogue-is-coming-true-cinefix-top-100">The Dark Knight</a>. Then there's the jewelry-crazed uncle and his reluctantly adventurous nephew crossing paths again in <a href="https://www.ign.com/videos/lord-of-the-rings-the-fellowship-of-the-ring-book-vs-movie">The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring</a>.</p><p></p><p>But my favorite types of jump scares don’t turn the screws with tension, but with safety. A quick personal aside: My daughter (who was 8 at the time) and I were watching <a href="https://www.ign.com/videos/the-lost-world-jurassic-park-whats-the-difference">The Lost World,</a> and because I’m very likely a pretty lame dad, I prefaced the hell out of the movie so she wouldn’t be scared. But during the escape from the raptors sequence, when Julianne Moore checks under the shed to be sure the coast is clear only to find out shortly thereafter that no, the coast was very much NOT clear, I explained the nature of that particular jump scare in a way that I’m sure ruined movies for my poor kid.</p><p></p><p>First of all, we’re in the middle of a tense scene as it is. This particular moment is a little bit of a chance to catch our breath, with at least a wall between us and the carnivores. We’re presented with a means of another escape by digging under the wall. We watch as Moore checks underneath it, confirming that it’s a safe space. The camera pans away from it quickly...and that’s key. We take our eyes off the safe space for a split second, only to find when we pan back to it… JUMP SCARE! Safety and respite are briefly teased before being pulled out from under us like our faith in Man’s ability to respect the limits of Creation.</p><div style="text-align: center;"><section></section></div><p>A few days later, I overheard my daughter explaining jump scares in her own words to her cousin, and I’ve honestly never been more proud, but the point here is that jump scares are a foundational, cleanly simple place to start our look at what makes a movie moment well and truly scary.</p><p></p><p>That same pattern of tension + momentary safety + rug pull can be found in another Spielberg gem, and our number 10 pick, the "Ben Gardner’s boat" scene from <a href="https://www.ign.com/videos/jaws-might-be-the-luckiest-mistake-in-movie-history-cinefix-top-100">Jaws</a>.</p><p></p><p>What’s great about this scene is the lengths taken to establish a sense of relative safety surrounding a nighttime swim to investigate the hull of the well-known fisherman’s boat. Some of it is even rooted in character. We’re still getting to know Richard Dreyfuss’s Matt Hooper, but his expertise has been completely established in the moments leading up to THE moment. We know he’s smart and respectful of the shark terrorizing Amity Island, but here we also see his capability. He’s got gadgets a-plenty on his boat, the backing of the film’s primary hero, and a confidence that we get to share as he dives in.</p><p></p><p>We also know that there is definitely a shark out there. The tension looms just under the surface, as it does for the rest of the film and the <a href="https://www.ign.com/articles/best-monster-movies">famously camera-shy antagonist</a>. But Spielberg’s greatest misdirect with this scene is the tooth. Finding a massive great white tooth lodged in the hull is frightening enough, surely -- we think -- and that’s what this scene has in store for us. It's the first visual proof of the scale of the problem but … NOPE.</p><p></p><p>Just when we think the scene is done with us, poor Ben Gardner’s head pops up to say hi. First of all, anything jumping out at us in this moment makes for a good jump scare, but it’s not the shark we were afraid of when we first jumped into the water, which accomplishes a few things besides just the scare. Most importantly, it maintains Hooper’s credibility. Had he confidently dove into the water and come face to face with the shark, he’d look pretty stupid for the rest of the film, and we can’t have that. But structurally, in the narrative of the movie, it had been a solid 20 minutes since the last shark sighting, and it’ll be another 10 or 12 before the next attack. We needed this tension and this scare to keep us on the edge of our seats between the more traditionally scary moments.</p><p></p><p>On top of the way this jump scare is executed, it’s a jolt of adrenaline to the audience at a spot in the runtime that really needed it, and the movie on the whole is better for it.</p><h2><strong>9. The Slow Burn Scare</strong></h2><p>Moving on from the jump scare -- the monster that takes you by surprise -- the natural place to go next is to the scare that you <em>see</em> coming. These are the slow burn scares, the ones that sneak up on you even though they’ve been slowly walking your way this whole time, like <a href="https://www.ign.com/articles/2014/10/16/it-follows-review">It Following</a> in the background, or each time <a href="https://www.ign.com/articles/binge-it-a-girl-walks-home-alone-at-night-vampire-movie">A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night</a>. These are films filled with moments of creeping dread, moments like a column silhouette turning to face us in <a href="https://www.ign.com/articles/the-night-house-review">The Night House</a>, or the cell phone footage discovered in <a href="https://www.ign.com/articles/2010/03/26/lake-mungo-dvd-review">Lake Mungo</a>. For a non-horror movie, think also about the critical scene on the highway at night during <a href="https://www.ign.com/articles/2016/11/18/nocturnal-animals-review">Nocturnal Animals</a>, and how the result of the encounter was so clear the entire time it was working its way towards the screen. They're slow moving terrorizers that you can’t look away from.</p><p></p><p>The best of these, by their very nature, take a while to organize. "Slow" is literally half of this category's name, and to distill them down to a moment is a mistake, as we must also include the long build-up. The best of these, to risk a cop-out at number 9, take the whole movie to build, and few have done it as well as 1973’s <a href="https://www.ign.com/articles/2015/06/11/christopher-lees-top-10-movies">The Wicker Man.</a></p><p></p><p>The Wicker Man is such a fun folk horror film, but it’s a little hard to watch it now without having at least a notion of how it’s going to play out. It’s been homaged, imitated, and literally remade enough that even if you’ve never seen it, you know it. That’s why I really want to highlight this movie here, even more than the craft of the film.</p><p></p><p>The moment when Sergeant Howie realizes his doom is imminent is only just a few minutes from the end, but it’s the result of an entire film's worth of build-up. The paganism of the island is something he’s known about for his entire stay, something he’s seen coming with every quirky Summerisle inhabitant he encounters, something they’ve been honest with him about since Christopher Lee’s charming Lord Summerisle told him about it all upon their first meeting. And for us in the audience, this set-up and execution are as familiar a trope as you could ask for, but it’s important to remember that it’s familiar <em>because</em> The Wicker Man did it so well.</p><p></p><p><a href="https://www.ign.com/videos/eli-roth-on-the-wicker-man">The movie is a cult favorite for a reason,</a> and it’s all clear in these final moments before desperation sets in. The policeman thinks he’s done his job, but the rug is pulled out from under him just as quickly. Set on a cliff overlooking the ocean, the scene finds him trapped between crashing waves and the calm matter-of-factness of the cult that’s about to sacrifice him to their pagan gods. This is the only end that Howie was ever meant for; it was deliberately plotted and slowly revealed for the entire runtime of the film, leaving us in the helpless shoes of a doomed man.</p><section></section><h2><strong>8. The Terrifying Image</strong></h2><p>To elicit any emotion on screen, at the intersection of all the trades required to make a movie work, these scary movie moments need to have their nuts and bolts in order. And because we’re nothing if not big ol’ marks for film craft here, let’s start breaking down some moments based on individual parts, starting with the visuals.</p><p></p><p>These are the moments that just <em>look</em> scary. There are films that lean on production design, like the <a href="https://www.ign.com/articles/2006/09/12/pans-labyrinth-2">Pale Man’s dinner table in Pan’s Labyrinth</a>, or venturing through the inner workings of a mad man in <a href="https://www.ign.com/articles/2000/08/17/review-of-the-cell">The Cell...</a> or <a href="https://www.ign.com/articles/2008/05/09/the-fall-review">any of Tarsem Singh’s work</a> for that matter. Also, a quick aside here: I'd like to advocate for stop motion as a preeminent vehicle for imagery that’s scary outside of all context, with films like The Wolf House made in the stop-motion equivalent of a single take and created entirely out of duct tape, or animation pioneer Phil Tippett’s magnum opus, Mad God.</p><section></section><p>But to be honest, terrifying visuals really sing loudest and most disturbingly in non-horror movies. More than any other category we’ll talk about here, a scary visual can REALLY pop in a film where you might not be expecting it. This is where the term <a href="https://www.ign.com/articles/they-dont-make-em-like-david-lynch-anymore">Lynchian really comes in handy,</a> as nearly all of the late auteur's work qualifies as not-really-horror-but-scary-as-hell-anyway, from a truly bizarre attempt at cutting a chicken, to Dean Stockwell karaoke, and beyond. For me though, when I think of scary on-the-look-alone, I always go back to <a href="https://www.ign.com/videos/director-series-ari-aster-cinefix">The Cook, The Thief, His Wife and Her Lover</a>.</p><p></p><p>Peter Greenaway’s 1989 film is, on paper at least, fairly straightforward. An obnoxious and powerful criminal strong-arms his way into a partnership with a gourmet chef while the crook’s wife falls for a bookish regular at the restaurant. It’s all right there in the title. However, the presentation of that story is anything but straightforward, and certainly not anything that would immediately fall into the scary movie bucket.</p><p></p><p>But the entire runtime of the film is otherworldly, and because I won’t be calling the whole movie a “moment,” I want to focus on the first tracking shot through the back of the house at the restaurant. It's not the first shot of the film, but it's still “the opening" -- a tracking shot that establishes something truly unsettling. There’s a formality to these proceedings, an artifice that is so front and center, it’s impossible not to notice or think, “what the hell is about to happen here?” </p><p></p><p>From the eerie falsetto of a young boy singing, lost in his own thoughts, through the bullying buffoonery of Michael Gambon’s Spica and the quiet resignation of the Cook, very aware of the trap he’s in with instinct enough to pick his rebellious spots. The smoke, the dark and damp back alley vibes, the duck feathers floating through the air like a gentle snow -- all of it is filmed in a slow and steady tracking shot.</p><div style="text-align: center;"><section></section></div><p>It's a shot that thoroughly establishes the tone of the film as something almost paranormal. This is a staged morality play, a classical tragedy about to unfold in a dark and dangerous world in which nothing good can last, and for this shot to happen so early in the film makes the moment all the more unsettling.</p><h2><strong>7. The Scare Built on the Sound</strong></h2><p>Let’s stick with craft for another couple picks and look at audio. These are the moments of terror that succeed in their scares chiefly through their use of sound. There are whole movies, of course, built on the idea of being quiet in order to survive, <a href="https://www.ign.com/articles/2018/03/10/a-quiet-place-review">A Quiet Place</a> being the most recent and fully committed of those examples.</p><p></p><p>Sometimes there’s a familiar clicking of an <a href="https://www.ign.com/articles/extended-ending-of-predator-killer-of-killers-featuring-arnold-schwarzenegger-as-dutch-and-danny-glover-as-mike-harrigan-to-broadcast-tonight-sdcc-2025">alien predator</a> to build tension, or tripping over a pet’s water bowl after a long stretch of silence to <em>break</em> tension. This sequence from <a href="https://www.ign.com/videos/watch-the-invisible-man-w-director-leigh-whannell-watch-from-home-theater">Invisible Man</a> is incredibly shrewd, pinning our hero's hopes for escape on her ability to stealthily get out of the house. Sometimes it’s just a loud noise that jump-starts our character back into reality, like the bus stopping suddenly in Cat People. This is the style of sound-based scares most often found in non-horror fare; think of the sequence from Ikiru that Darren Aronofsky later borrowed for <a href="https://www.ign.com/articles/2016/05/17/13-most-ambitious-movies-ever-made">The Fountain</a>, with the sudden intrusion of sound from the world around the isolated characters waking ALL of us back up. </p><p></p><p><a href="https://www.ign.com/articles/2012/02/09/ten-terrible-date-movies">We Need to Talk About Kevin</a> also deserves a non-horror mention for the truly awful sound of the titular Kevin biting his fingernails that adds a disturbing aura to that entire scene, and to invoke David Lynch again, the sound design attached to the old woman -- a moment that rightfully belongs in the jump scare category, but is absolutely sold on the strength of that haunting sound.</p><p></p><p>But scary sounds are best in scary movies, when a single spike in the waveform can send shivers down your spine in a sea of other scary moments. For this, we look to The <a href="https://www.ign.com/articles/conjuring-movies-in-order">Conjuring’s game of hide and clap</a>, with one last solitary clap coming at us from the dark. This moment is built on the sound design of the previous few minutes, with creaks and whispers originating from the dark corners of the house. While it is undoubtedly effective, for a moment based entirely on the sound, our number 7 pick goes to the clucking from <a href="https://www.ign.com/articles/2018/06/07/hereditary-review">Hereditary</a>.</p><p></p><p>By the time we get to the clucking, we know exactly what the sound is, what it means, and where it comes from. It’s an involuntary tic, something Milly Shapiro's Charlie does that's quite literally out of her control. It’s something that on a narrative level implies the presence of a demon, but on an emotional level, it’s a reminder for Toni Collette’s Annie of the pain and grief that comes with loss. This tongue click in an empty car is the <em>perfect</em> deployment of a single sound scare.</p><p></p><p>What makes Hereditary great -- what makes <em>any</em> movie truly great -- is a connection to the characters. Things sneaking up on you, either visually or auditorily, will always give you a jolt, but things sneaking up on our <em>emotions</em> can do you one better. Here’s a moment where a mother is grieving, where disturbing mysteries about her family are coming to light, and she is at her breaking point; it's something we can all empathize with. This sound, this piece of her daughter from the past, is a terrifying straw on a camel’s back that’s all but broken. It’s a trap that had been laid close to an hour earlier, creating a heartbreaking moment that’s also a terrifying jump scare.</p><p></p><section></section><h2><strong>6. The Edit</strong></h2><p>Combining picture and sound is sort of the literal definition of editing, so for our number 6 spot following our audio and visual cues, we may as well look at editing as well. Of course every scary moment on this list works based on the edit to some degree, but think about our last pick -- that quick cut to the backseat certainly helps, but it’s not WHY it’s such an impactful moment. Editing does a lot of different things, however, and looks a little different for each moment.</p><p></p><p>It’s important to remember that there are entire documentaries about the editing in <a href="https://www.ign.com/videos/10-best-movie-endings-of-all-time-a-cinefix-movie-list">Psycho’s shower</a> scene, so right off the bat, I can tell you that I’m not going to waste your time by talking about it more here. But for <em>other </em>scares that are truly pulled off via the edit, we can first look at a wild montage like the ending of <a href="https://www.ign.com/videos/scariest-movie-moments-movie-list-cinefix">Don’t Look Now</a> that rapid-fires through a panicked set of images. This is also where my non-horror example would live, in the final moments of the still very horrific Come and See, flashing back in our protagonist’s imagination to find Hitler as a child.</p><p></p><p>Flashy quick cuts are not the only way to show off an edit, though. Sometimes the magic lives in <em>not</em> cutting. The Exorcist III’s famous hallway scene is as great a jump scare as has ever been seen in film, but it’s achieved through an incredibly long "what is it I’m supposed to be looking at" shot that builds the tension. </p><p></p><p>When we look at editing, we also have to think about juxtaposition. Where on-screen scares are concerned, I always think about <a href="https://www.ign.com/articles/best-slasher-movies">The Texas Chainsaw Massacre</a> for this, with hard and fast cuts away from the gruesome to something peaceful. There’s also the narrative function of images on screen to consider, like Jordan Peele’s cutting back to the sitcom tragedy in Nope before we know its significance. But for pure editing, the brilliant combination of images and sound to tell a story, I’d really like to talk about Hélène Cattet and Bruno Forzani’s neo-giallo slasher, Amer.</p><p></p><p>On first blush, this is a largely visual movie you might think doesn’t belong in this category. Sure, its primary language is French, but you really don’t need the subtitles. It’s a luscious, erotic, and violent collection of close-ups coupled with the creaking of leather and the slice of a blade as gravel crunches beneath heavy boots. The film is a collection of images and sounds assembled in such a tight, breathless way that still manage to convey space and time and character in spite of being assembled almost entirely of insert shots.</p><p></p><p>But one moment in particular, at the end of a midnight cat-and-mouse chase through an italian villa, involves a sudden burst of violence erupting as a stylized attack. A long stretch of quietly breathless sneaking in blue-hued day-for-night is suddenly over with a series of swooshing stabs and gasps. This moment leads to an even more drawn out, methodically tortuous death filmed with quick inserts and a raw, animalistic sound design that makes you squirm. </p><p></p><p>Amer takes everything giallo was known for and squeezes it with a black leather glove, making it all sing through the edit. If the film weren’t cut so expertly, moments like this would be a nonsensical collection of inserts and sound effects; instead, it’s a sequence worth studying for its ability to convey so much fear and anxiety and discomfort with such minimal imagery.</p><section></section><h2><strong>5. The Scare Based on Real Phobias</strong></h2><p>For the second half of our list, let’s move away from strictly craft-based categories and get into some psychological stuff. To start with, I want to look at real fears -- movies that very deliberately tap into well-known phobias. These can show up in the subject matter easily enough, with very little to do with the actual craft of filmmaking. Are you scared of big dogs? Maybe <a href="https://www.ign.com/articles/2007/09/12/cujo-25-anniversary-edition-dvd-review">Cujo</a> is going to give you nightmares. Scared of nightmares? Well, <a href="https://www.ign.com/articles/the-nightmare-on-elm-street-movies-in-order">Freddy Krueger’s got a pun</a> for that, I'm sure.</p><p></p><p>Some of our favorite scary stories to tell around the CineFix campfire though are moments of claustrophobia, like the tight underground tunnels of <a href="https://www.ign.com/articles/best-modern-horror-movies">The Descent</a> or the tight underwater tunnels of the perfectly titled <a href="https://www.ign.com/articles/2020/01/08/underwater-review">Underwater</a>. Both of those films feature killer monsters, but perhaps their most squirm-worthy moments trade on that all-too-common fear of enclosed spaces.</p><p></p><p>Then there’s the opposite fear, agoraphobia, that Hitchcock plays with famously in <a href="https://www.ign.com/articles/best-thriller-movies">North by Northwest</a>. There’s just straight up getting hopelessly lost in the woods, like in <a href="https://www.ign.com/articles/why-the-blair-witch-project-is-scariest-in-broad-daylight">The Blair Witch Project,</a> and then there’s the old reliable, 'scared of the dark.'</p><p></p><p>Every movie I’ve mentioned here also features sequences in which the darkness holds a significant danger. There’s always something lurking in the shadows just beyond the light, but the cleverest twist on this timeless fear shows up in the basement of a serial killer with night vision goggles in <a href="https://www.ign.com/articles/2017/11/01/our-10-favorite-heroines-in-modern-horror-movie-history">The Silence of the Lambs</a><strong>.</strong></p><p></p><p>By the end of The Silence of the Lambs, we know how much danger Jodie Foster’s Clarice is in. She’s been a step ahead of her boss for most of the film, and by the time she tracks down Jame Gumb, discovers he’s actually Buffalo Bill, and has to chase him into his basement / dungeon / fashion studio, we’ve already visited the space on a few occasions. For the audience, there’s no mystery as to what’s down there, so how does director Jonathan Demme escalate a terrifying Act Three set piece in a familiar location?</p><p></p><p>He turns out the lights.</p><p></p><p>But instead of letting us fester in our collective fear of moments like this, we get to see the scenario from the perspective of the thing we’re <em>afraid</em> of. We’re looking on as Clarice, eyes wide, pupils dilated and begging for light, stumbles through the basement groping at the walls; we're seeing her through Buffalo Bill’s eyes. We see how easy it would be for him to reach out and kill our hero, and how he’s toying with the idea of doing just that. </p><p></p><p>The effect is not a jolt of adrenaline like something jumping out at you from the dark. Instead, the first-person perspective confirms what we’ve always been afraid of -- that there’s something in the dark waiting to do us harm -- and the scene is all the more terrifying for it. </p><section></section><h2><strong>4. Existential Dread / What Is This Terrifying Nonsense?</strong></h2><p>Ping-ponging away from the well-known phobias, we need to also look at the type of fear that’s not quite so easy to put your finger on. This is the realm of the existential, when a film presents you with an image that asks you to question your very nature. For me, I find myself simplifying that down to, “what is this terrifying nonsense?”</p><p></p><p><a href="https://www.ign.com/articles/2015/05/11/movies-that-belong-in-the-twilight-zone">Jacob’s Ladder</a> has a thousand great moments for this; Ken Russell’s work generally falls into this category for me as well, with Altered States and The Devils being a pair of fascinating films. Nicholas Winding Refn’s Valhalla Rising doesn’t quite qualify as a traditional horror film, but the simple-on-the-surface rock-stacking sequence is one of the more disturbing moments of that film, while I must, yet again, invoke David Lynch’s particularly unsettling tone in…oh, it’s everywhere in his work.</p><p></p><p>And does <a href="https://www.ign.com/articles/2018/09/11/mandy-review">Mandy</a> count as a horror movie? I think it does, but it also certainly counts as three or four other kinds of movies at minimum, including a drug-fueled cult trip into the heart of madness and revenge that peeks past the curtain of humanity and into the dark places beyond. But it’s hard not to pick an oldie but a goodie, a moment from a movie that likely could have or should have been used in all these categories: The bear suit guy from <a href="https://www.ign.com/articles/the-original-photo-from-the-shinings-iconic-final-shot-has-been-found-45-years-after-the-movies-release">The Shining</a>.</p><p></p><section></section><p>Two hours and change into the runtime of this much-dissected horror classic, Stanley Kubrick has us sprinting to the finish. Jack is axe-wielding his way toward Danny while Wendy is frantically trying to secure her son’s safety. It’s chaos, utter insanity-inducing chaos, particularly when compared to the rest of the movie’s relatively measured pace. And then Wendy tops another set of stairs to find a man in an assless bear suit performing a sex act on a man in a tux, who pops up to make eye contact with an inscrutable look on his face.</p><p></p><p>This moment, especially the first time you see it, fits so perfectly into my “what is this terrifying nonsense” definition that it’s almost like I reverse engineered this entire category. Ink has been spilled for literally decades about the scene's meaning and metaphorical significance, and every theory out there has merit, which is what makes this moment so great. </p><p></p><p>On the surface, it’s a truly bizarre image couched in a sequence of increasing terror. Wendy’s husband is trying to kill her and her son, she can’t find him anywhere, the hotel is understood to be haunted as shit at this point in the film, and then she stumbles on this remarkably upsetting scene. While that’s a specific set of circumstances not many of us have found ourselves in, the Rorschach-ness of it -- the ability to read your own flavor of horror into it -- speaks to how existentially terrifying this scene can be.</p><p></p><section></section><h2><strong>3. SHOCK!!!</strong></h2><p>Getting into the final third of our list, we have to pay a visit to the specific subgenre responsible for as many scary movie moments as anything else: Body horror. The shock and grotesquerie of seeing the human body pushed past its limits creates images that can, in a snap, terrify our most inner caveman brains.</p><p></p><p>There is a Mount Rushmore of body horror that is easy to rattle off, from the chest-chomper in John Carpenter's The Thing, to the spider-head from the Thing, to the…my God, most of The Thing could be our pick here! Ditto for Jeff Goldblum’s gradual evolution into BrundleFly, or the tapedeck tummy of Videodrome, which puts David Cronenberg in the all-timers club. <a href="https://www.ign.com/videos/9-shocking-movie-transformations">An American Werewolf in London’s transformation scene</a> is carved into the side of a mountain as well, so I’m not going to speak more about any of those here.</p><section></section><p>There are great, shocking, violent moments of disfigurement in films like <a href="https://www.ign.com/articles/2015/05/18/green-room-review">Green Room</a>, when an arm gets stuck on the wrong side of a door, or in Midsommar during the suicide jump, or the hooks dance sequence in <a href="https://www.ign.com/articles/2018/10/24/suspiria-review">Luca Guadagnino’s Suspiria</a> remake. All of them are incredibly disturbing and sudden.</p><p></p><p>But there’s a quieter side of body horror. Think about <a href="https://www.ign.com/articles/2010/11/02/black-swan-review">Black Swan</a>, which perfectly toes the line between “scary movie that’s not a horror film” and “just straight up a horror film” while following the slow descent of a ballerina into something else entirely. This, I would argue, is also <a href="https://www.ign.com/articles/2014/09/06/nightcrawler-review">Nightcrawler</a>, digging at the depths to which ambitions will drive and warp somebody mentally. For our Number 3 spot though, there are two movies I love for the body horror’s subtler side: The Skin I Live In and <a href="https://www.ign.com/articles/2008/08/28/the-best-dvd-box-art-horror">Eyes Without A Face.</a></p><p></p><p>These films about renowned surgeons performing experimental surgeries at home, about an urge to right a wrong with yet more wrong, aren’t related. To clarify, The Skin I Live In is not technically a remake of Eyes Without A Face, but I’ve always found the films to be fascinating companions. One features a man seeking a new face for his daughter who’d been disfigured in a car accident, while the other focuses on a man seeking revenge on the young man who raped his daughter. Both Pedro Almodóvar’s 2011 film and Georges Franju’s 1960 film feature a clinical approach to body modification. </p><p></p><p>The doctors have so fully committed to the reason they’re doing these things -- the why of it all -- that there’s no questioning their actions. It’s most evident in the quieter moments, like the simple and straightforward way the doctor and his wife drug their victim. It’s the casual normalcy with which Dr. Ledgard examines the progress of his work. Above all, it’s the comfort with which they go about it, with no regard to being caught or exposed. These films don’t shock with gore or sudden snapping of bones; they look at incredibly intelligent and skilled people with real and relatable motivations doing horrible things to their victims without thinking twice.</p><p></p><p>If body horror is about blowing past the limits of what the human body should be able to do, making you squirm while watching it, The Skin I Live In and Eyes Without A Face ask you to consider what <em>you</em> would do given the tools at these doctors' disposal, making you squirm just the same.</p><h2><strong>2. The All-Consuming Terror</strong></h2><p>There are only two spots left, and so many scary moments still to consider...which is in itself another scary moment for anybody that’s ever written a movie list! But one more stop that we need to make is in the realm of the all-consuming scare; these are the moments that create terror or even just unease, and then make you stew in it. </p><p></p><p>This is different from the slow burn or the existential scares in that these moments are still more self-contained -- moments that confront the viewer with a very specific feeling and force you to keep watching. Most of <a href="https://www.ign.com/articles/nosferatu-review">Nosferatu</a> lives in this world, especially when the vampyre kills the two children. This is <a href="https://www.ign.com/videos/five-killer-horror-flicks-that-are-better-with-social-commentary">Get Out</a>’s Sunken Place sequence, and the girls walking away in slow motion from Picnic at Hanging Rock while their friend still watches at sound speed.</p><p></p><section></section><p>This is another category that non-horror movies see a lot of success in, because I find Barry Keoghan eating spaghetti in <a href="https://www.ign.com/videos/director-styles-movie-lists-cinefix">The Killing of a Sacred Deer</a> to be terrifying, not to mention the later sequences of Mother! But the all-consuming scene I think of most often is the beach sequence in <a href="https://www.ign.com/articles/2014/03/08/under-the-skin-review">Under the Skin</a>.</p><p></p><p>Jonathan Glazer’s version of <a href="https://www.ign.com/videos/top-gun-mavericks-jon-hamm-takes-the-ultimate-1980s-movies-quiz">E.T.</a>, Under the Skin finds an alien abducting men throughout Scotland for some type of study. She finds herself on a beach luring her next subject, a surfer, back to a van when a tragedy begins to unfold in the water further down the beach. A dog has ventured too far out into the waves; a woman tries to save it, then a man tries to save <em>her,</em> followed by the surfer trying to save them both, only for all of them to fail, leaving a baby alone on the beach.</p><p></p><p>It’s an upsetting scene just to describe, but the true brilliance is in how it’s shot. We can hear nothing over the powerful sounds of the waves. Glazer uses long lenses, leaving us detached from the proceedings, unable to connect or participate in the same way that Scarlett Johansson's alien female is incapable of empathy. </p><p></p><p>The scene also sets up her journey for the rest of the film. It’s an Act One break at which she begins to want something, to know what being human feels like. But to watch a family drown, to leave their infant stranded and alone, and to pull it off from such a detached perspective, is the whole reason this movie is incredible, featuring a truly terrifying movie moment. </p><h2><strong>1. Fear of the Nothingness / Void / Oh God Whatever's Next</strong></h2><p>As we arrive at our number one category, we’re fully on the other side of the spectrum from the jump scare with which we started. For our last spot, I want to talk about something everybody has in common. Regardless of who you are, where you come from, or what you find scary, we’re all going to die some day; it’s the one universal fear there is -- knowing that one day, for some reason, you’ll just stop. Movies that can pull off a scary moment built around the unknowable void that comes after death are fewer and farther between than those in our other categories.</p><p></p><p>There are of course some great rug pull-style twists that point in this direction, famously featured in movies like <a href="https://www.ign.com/articles/2018/10/12/ten-top-haunted-house-movies">The Others</a> and <a href="https://www.ign.com/videos/defining-the-ghost-genre-from-around-the-world">The Sixth Sense</a>. But Lars von Trier’s super slo-mo overture at the beginning of <a href="https://www.ign.com/articles/2009/10/09/the-antichrist-of-sci-fi">Melancholia</a> is more what we’re looking for; it's a moment that stares the end of existence in the face. <a href="https://www.ign.com/videos/top-10-practical-effects-of-all-time-a-cinefix-movie-list">2001: A Space Odyssey</a> cosmically does the same thing with Dave Bowman’s life cycle, presenting an uncomfortable and, dare I say, scary thread to pull on at the end of a mind-blowing bit of science fiction. </p><p></p><p>But the moment and movie I want to talk about is more recent, with a title that hints at the oldest scary moments in our storytelling history. It's the montage of time passing in 2017’s <a href="https://www.ign.com/videos/top-10-a24-movies-a-cinefix-movie-list">A Ghost Story</a>.</p><p></p><p>What begins as a contained story about grief and a ghost watching his partner move on with her life shifts gears to the entire <em>world</em> moving on. About two thirds of the way through the movie, writer/director David Lowery presents us with a montage of time passing from the perspective of this ghost. It is eerie, unsettling, and magnificently edited to feel as though it’s happening in real time. In the spot on which his house used to stand, a skyscraper is constructed in two straight minutes, and it all ends with a ghost deciding to jump off a building.</p><section></section><p>Time itself is presented as incalculably huge in the montage, with a sense of loneliness, of desperation, damnation even, accompanying this long-waiting ghost; it’s a terrifying thought. </p><p></p><p>The technique Lowery (who edited the film as well) uses to jump us through time the same way in which the ghost perceives it is used throughout the film, but it never feels like much more than cleverly assembling the story…<em>until</em> this montage. As his spirit lingers, we see that this moment makes the story about more than one dead man’s experience. This is a movie about memory and legacy and their microscopic significance set against eternity itself. Nowhere is that driven home more than the montage of a fraction of that eternity passing, which -- for my money -- makes it one of the scariest movie moments of all time.</p><p></p></section>

October 20, 2025 at 10:07 AM

Video Game News, Reviews, and Walkthroughs - IGN

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Dead Space Creator Glen Schofield Thinks the Games Industry is “Broken, Beaten, and Battered” but he has a three-point plan to fix it.

<section class="article-page"><img src="https://assets-prd.ignimgs.com/2024/12/23/ds-1734951788399.jpg" /><section></section><p>In an impassioned end to his keynote address on the opening day of Gamescom Asia x Thailand Game Show in Bangkok, Dead Space creator and industry veteran Glen Schofield has declared that the games industry is in dire need of fixing, and he believes he knows just how to go about it. </p><p>“We need to fix the gaming industry right now,” said Schofield to a room of games industry professionals. “It's broken. It's beaten, it's battered, our developers are battered, they've been taking it on the chin for the last couple of years. We need to bring it back to what it was, right? Instead of all this negativity.”</p><section></section><p>The first and arguably most controversial step to take in Schofield’s opinion, is for the games industry to widely embrace the use of generative AI as a standard part of their development tool set.</p><p>“AI isn’t here to replace us,” continued Schofield. “It’s here to make us faster, better, and more efficient. And AI is for all of us, it really is. It’s not just for directors and artists, it’s for writers and marketing execs. </p><p>“So, I think [games industry] executives, owners, founders… Let's start training our people on AI. Start it as soon as you can. Who cares if I’m EA or Activision or Namco or whatever, we should be working together at least in training and training our people up. That would be a huge help because I know we’re going to start hiring people back again.”</p><p>Next up, Schofield believes that investors need to loosen their purse strings and start spending more on games development, as well as putting the right people in charge of each studio.</p><p>“Come on, investors and execs, let’s stop this madness,” said Schofield. “You want to make a AAA game for like eight million dollars? You gotta get your guts back again. If we start putting money into the industry again, we know it's going to make money.”</p><p>“To me, you picked the wrong people to run the teams, to run the games, right? In my opinion [you need] a big, creative person who’s running it. And then you put people around to help with this and that. That's the way I work these days, right? I still run my studio in ways but I have people to help now so I can be 100% or 98% on that. That’s what these games need. I saw some of the people that were chosen and they were really good people, but there's no way they were ready to direct a game.”</p><section></section><p>“So I said, let's start putting money in, do due diligence a little better on that. We know we're going to make money. But we have to make quality games, and you have to give them to the right people.”</p><p>Lastly, and perhaps most strangely given that he was presenting the opening keynote address at a rival games industry show, Schofield wished for the return of E3.</p><p>“Bring back E3,” said Schofield to soft applause. “I mean, come on. E3 is the granddaddy of them all. And I will tell you every single E3 that I went to made my games better. And I know there's no formula to show a [return on investment] on that, [but] every game got better when you went there. You talked with your friends, you talked with colleagues, everybody's thrilled to help you with the next technologies, or showing you mechanics. When the companies started going outside of E3 I knew this was the end, and I started boycotting those because [that] was not an industry that was working together, this is an industry that’s fragmented. And so now there’s no E3.”</p><p>Schofield concluded his address by reiterating that while he’s fully onboard with AI, the most important aspect of games development were the people making them, not the machines.</p><p>“Remember, ideas are the lifeblood of the industry,” said Schofield, speaking to the developers in attendance. “And those ideas? They come from you.”</p><p>How do you feel about Schofield’s plan to “fix” the games industry? Sound off in the comments below!</p><section></section><p><em>Tristan Ogilvie is a senior video editor at IGN's Australian office, currently attending Gamescom Asia x Thailand Game Show.</em>
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October 17, 2025 at 3:57 AM

Video Game News, Reviews, and Walkthroughs - IGN

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Black Phone 2 Review: The Grabber does his best Freddy Krueger impression even as director Scott Derrickson and his co-writer C. Robert Cargill refuse to let the sequel be another redundant Hollywood cash-in.

<section class="article-page"><img src="https://assets-prd.ignimgs.com/2025/09/23/black-phone-2-thumb-1758586868922.jpg" /><section></section><p><em>This review is based on a screening which took place at the 2025 Fantastic Fest Film Festival. Black Phone 2 will be released theatrically in the United States on October 17.</em></p><section></section><p>In the wrong hands, sequels can be predatory pursuits. When studio executives watch films like <a href="https://www.ign.com/articles/2012/03/13/sinister-review"><u>Sinister</u></a> or <a href="https://www.ign.com/articles/the-black-phone-review"><u>The Black Phone</u></a> amass healthy box office returns, the desire to double-dip burns like an inferno. Dollar signs (can or might) outweigh creative pursuits. But in the right hands, a sequel broadens new ideas and spawns fresh potential. A sequel can unlock storytelling you'd never expect. Director Scott Derrickson and his co-writer C. Robert Cargill refuse to let <a href="https://www.ign.com/movies/black-phone-2"><u>Black Phone 2</u></a> be another redundant Hollywood cash-in, and by their efforts, bring us as close to Freddy Krueger as we'll get until there's another A Nightmare on Elm Street.</p><section></section><p>The Black Phone wasn’t intended to have a sequel, based on a one-off Joe Hill story as it was. Derrickson and Cargill are in uncharted territory, which becomes their advantage. Ethan Hawke returns as The Grabber, not of flesh and bone; he's a boogeyman in your nightmares, yet the pain he inflicts leaves real scars. But The Grabber’s resurrection is hardly a Wes Craven knockoff. The filmmakers’ new nightmare is an ambitious evolution of The Black Phone that proves horror sequels don't have to recycle the same cheap thrills for another go-around. Despite borrowing Jason Voorhees' campground backdrop, this film is not just another repetitive sequel like Friday the 13th has been known to produce.</p><p>Frankly, Black Phone 2 is a punk rock horror sequel. Derrickson and Cargill ripen evils instead of playing the old hits. The Grabber transforms from a kiddie-killing sicko to a devil's reject who took ice-skating lessons. The survivor’s guilt of the first film’s Finney sees returning actor Mason Thames playing him as a haunted pot-head, while Madeleine McGraw, also back from Part 1, steps into the lead role as Finney’s sister Gwen, channeling her lucid dreams and clairvoyant abilities. Denver's quiet suburbs are traded for blizzard conditions at the Alpine Lake Catholic sleepaway camp, sending wintery, frostbitten chills up our spines, brought on by The Grabber's freezer-burned appearance. It's nothing like the original, nor does it want to depend on familiarity. The filmmakers make the most of their second chance—this ain't a churn-and-burn continuation.</p><section>The film is an ambitious evolution of The Black Phone that proves horror sequels don't have to recycle the same cheap thrills for another go-around. </section><p>The murderous events of The Black Phone leave Finney and Gwen rightfully traumatized, which puts a heavy emphasis on character exploration. Finney numbs the pain with "devil's lettuce," stalked by hallucinations of The Grabber, while Gwen answers the ring of black phones, driven by a pursuit for answers and the opportunity to help other lost souls. The script ruminates on grief and unrest by sorting through Finney and Gwen's psychological damage, but can dawdle at times before The Grabber's malevolence is felt in full force once again. There's also the addition of Demián Bichir's camp supervisor, whose biblical knowledge and reliance on faith bring holiness into a conversation about bleak-as-tar evils for added theological debates. But Black Phone 2 is always Finney and Gwen's showcase. A brother-sister ghostbusting drama that tastes awfully dour until past the halfway point, when The Grabber's hold turns emotional hurts into gaping wounds and breathless terrors raise the ante.</p><p>That's not to say Black Phone 2 is only valuable when kiddos become cadaver popsicles. It's more the anticipation of inevitable snowscape horrors that’s nipping at our nose, which can't help but distract in the slightest while Finney and Gwen wrestle with lingering demons. Miguel Mora reprises his role as Ernesto Arellano, living on in his brother Robin's honor as Gwen's sweetheart of a love interest. Jeremy Davies earns redemption as the now sober Terrance, the supportive and loving papa to Finney and Gwen. It's all necessary to further define how post-traumatic stress can tear your world apart, paired with the hopefulness that brighter days can prevail, but you can sense the film's nearly two-hour runtime. Not terribly detrimentally, yet still, there's a missing giddyup at times.</p><section></section><p>Past that gripe, Black Phone 2 is a rich slasher mystery that transcends life and death. Hawke's turn as a vengeful iteration of The Grabber's deceased self is fire and brimstone, and his flesh-rotting face, which he exposes sans mask to drive home terrifying imagery, bears scorched scars from Hell. Derrickson whips out his Super 8 camera to denote whenever Gwen has entered The Grabber's sleep realm, where she alone can confront her villain, which is a clever visual touch to differentiate between reality and dreamland. There's an old-school Hollyweird feel to these sequences, like Gwen stars in her own uncanny movie, but then we're quickly ripped back to (the film's) reality, where she's gushing blood or being tossed around like an invisible ragdoll. Derrickson ensures stakes are dreadfully real in either universe, unleashing violence that leaves your mouth agape.</p><p>For as ponderous and introspective as Black Phone 2 can be, it's still a fresh reinvention of traditional slasher tropes. Even the stereotype about how horror sequels tend to go bonkers is on display, since The Grabber has an entire icecapades routine on magical frozen blades. The film's cheekiness—snowmen with The Grabber's smile, his maniacal taunts via conversation—is abundant. And yet, Black Phone 2 matters beyond dreadful realizations and hacked-in-half noggins. Derrickson and Cargill navigate the murky themes of self-imprisonment and meaningful recovery, ultimately conveying a wholesome message, but not before subjecting their characters to grave desperation. It's a lot to digest, and sorrow weighs heavily, but at the end of it all, these filmmakers find a way to leave us uplifted while still delivering all the slashery goodness we so crave.</p><section></section><p></p></section>

September 23, 2025 at 1:38 AM

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