Not that long ago, I had a conversation about horror movies with Variety ’s former chief Asia film critic in which I mentioned that ghost stories (especially the Japanese kind, where spirits haunt the living until some unresolved injustice from their past can be rectified) don’t really scare me, because ghosts aren’t real. Oh, but they are, she insisted, suggesting that she may have encountered them herself. What my Chinese colleague can’t understand is Americans’ obsession with slasher movies. Now that’s a genre that does nothing for her, since serial killers seem as far removed from her culture as ghosts do from mine.

I was reminded of this conversation as I watched “ The Black Phone 2 ,” director Scott Derrickson ’s artful sequel to his atmospheric Blumhouse horror show about the

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