THE BLACK PHONE 2 (2025) review
written by: Scott Derrickson and C. Robert Cargill
produced by: Jason Blum, Scott Derrickson, and C. Robert Cargill
directed by: Scott Derrickson
rated: R (for strong violent content, gore, teen drug use, and language)
runtime: 114 min.
U.S. release date: October 17, 2025
Back in 2022, Universal Pictures and Blumhouse Productions had a surprise sleeper summer hit on their hands with “The Black Phone”. The horror story was written by screenwriters C. Robert Cargill and Scott Derrickson (who also directed), who stretched out an eponymously titled short story by Joe Hill into a feature. Despite a definitive ending, studio conversations inevitably led to sequel talk, and here we are with “The Black Phone 2”. While it’s great to see some of the actors returning and Cargill and Derrickson’s involvement might make one hopeful, it’s unfortunate that it feels unoriginal and as unnecessary as so many other sequels.
It’s one thing to expand on the supernatural elements of the first movie, but it’s hard to believe that Cargill and Derrickson thought it’d be a good idea to apply the worn-out formula from the “Nightmare on Elm Street” franchise here. Add to that some cheap jump scares and thinly-realized dream logic thrown onto some unconvincing production design, and you’ve got a sequel that’s similar to one of those dreams you quickly forget about once you wake up.
It’s 1982, and four years have passed since the traumatic events surrounding the child abductor/serial killer, the Grabber (Ethan Hawke), that occurred in the last movie. Finny Blake (Mason Thames) is now 17, and his sister, Gwen (Madeleine McGraw), is 14. They both still live in North Denver, Colorado, under the same roof as their 3-year-sober father, Terrence (played by Jeremy Davies). The siblings are still close, with Gwen looking out for Finney, who’s primarily turned to smoking pot and using schoolyard fights to release his anger (which is the manifestation of lingering fear from what he endured). Finney remains protective of Gwen, whose psychic dream abilities have increased over the years, often manifesting in sleepwalking episodes.
Both of them have suffered from their recent past and are dealing with it in their own way as well. Whenever Finney walks by a pay phone that rings, he still picks it up, but is quick to answer with a rehearsed, “I’m sorry. I can’t help you”, and hangs up. It doesn’t help that word of mouth has spread like wildfire – just about everyone knows Gwen’s abilities, while Finney is known as the sole survivor who killed the Grabber. It’s easier for Gwen to deal with all of this socially, but she needs Finny’s help to deal with the weight of her growing abilities. I’ll give the screenplay credit for including the emotional scars that both siblings still have to contend with.
At the movie’s cold open, we meet a young woman using a phone booth in an outdoor, wintry wilderness setting by a lake. Snow-capped mountains can be seen in the distance, and she is having a conversation while holding a black phone. The year is 1957, the place is Alpine Lake Camp in northern Colorado, and the young woman on the phone is Hope (Anna Lore), who will eventually be the mother of Finney and Gwen. Just like her son did in the previous movie, she’s talking to someone she doesn’t know. Eventually, we’ll realize that she has passed on her psychic dream abilities to Gwen. Anyone who recalls the details in the last movie will catch on here pretty easily.
25 years later, Gwen is enduring terrible visions of young, dead children from the afterlife. There are three of them, all boys and horribly scarred. We see their murders through Gwen’s visions, which take the appearance of 16mm (or something close to it), and they were murdered in a wintry landscape that looks a lot like that Christian camp her mother worked at. Meanwhile, Gwen’s classmate and number one admirer, Ernesto (Miguel Mora), has snagged her a ticket to the upcoming Duran Duran concert, which earns her some razzing from her big brother. Ernesto is probably the only other kid who doesn’t ridicule or tease Gwen and Finney for what they went through, and that’s because he’s the younger brother of Robin Arellano, who was one of the Grabber’s victims and a friend of Finney’s. (Mora also previously played Robin in the first movie, so it’s a fun casting move.)
Through her visions and help from Finney and their father, Gwen can place the location of child murders at Alpine Lake Camp. When she coincidentally learns that the winter camp is hiring for CIT (counselors-in-training), Gwen encourages Finney to apply for a position. He’s not crazy about the idea, but knows that it may be the only place to get to the bottom of the visions that plague his sister. He agrees to travel to the Bible camp and is joined by Gwen and Ernesto – because, well, it’s Ernesto’s car. They arrive in a blizzard and are guided in by a young woman on a horse named Mustang. The young woman is called Mustang (Arianna Rivas, last seen in “A Working Man”), not the horse. She’s the niece of Armando (Demián Bichir, delivering cringy dialogue), the supervisor of the camp, but you can call him “Mando.”
Due to the weather (and an obvious plot convenience), no campers or camp staff have arrived, creating a more eerie environment with its dim lighting and howling wind. There are also two other adult staff members on the grounds, a married couple, Kenneth (Graham Abbey) and Barbara (Maev Beaty) – please refrain from calling her “Barb” – who seem to have lived on this campground since they were campers themselves. How much you want to bet they are just here to be collateral damage?
Side Note: I’ve been around my share of sleepaway camps, especially Christian ones, and I cannot for the life of me see how or why one would remain open during the frigid winter months. Since we’ve seen visions of the camp open during wintertime in the past, it’s clear that it’s not solely a summer camp. If this is during Christmas break, are they arriving after the holiday? Sure, there’s fun winter activity to partake in, but what kid is gonna wanna spend their precious downtime in a snowswept wilderness? After all, it’s 1982, the year John Carpenter’s “The Thing” came out. That’s a hard “nope”.
The camp is where both siblings will encounter the Grabber, which is problematic considering his demise at the end of the last movie. His return is fuzzy, and at no point do Derrickson and Cargill go out of their way to explain it, because the answer is: franchise. While it’s puzzling how the Grabber can haunt Finney (obviously, the camp’s titular device, used during the movie’s opening, plays a factor), he somehow winds up appearing in Gwen’s dreamscape, aiming to terrorize her to exact his revenge on Finney. Once Finney catches on to the Grabber’s plan, he becomes consumed with keeping Gwen safe and recruits everyone else to help fend off the threat in some way. At the same time, they learn of the Grabber’s past ties to this specific camp and Finney and Gwen’s family.
The sibling dynamic is the main draw to “The Black Phone 2” initially, primarily because Thames and McGraw are so good together. It’s not a good sign that the movie is engaging and intriguing until about an hour in when Hawke’s Grabber shows up. When he does show up, we are just as confused as Finney is. The more the Grabber appears to Gwen in her dreamscape, the more he turns into Freddy Krueger, inflicting violence on her while being invisible to anyone in the living realm. The resemblance feels less like an homage and more like a blatant ripoff, and the execution isn’t even that convincing. In the first movie, the Grabber was a masked maniac, but now he has somehow transformed into a supernatural force, slicing victims with a sharp blade.
The movie’s third act primarily takes place at night, on a frozen lake near the camp. It’s explained that the Grabber will be out on the lake, because in his past, he was a great ice skater. Seriously. I must say one of the most unintentionally funny moments I’ve seen all year on the big screen is the moment when the Grabber is skating full speed toward one of our heroes. It’s ridiculous. Maybe the intent was to be kinda goofy, but none of that is earned or developed. It just happens. It doesn’t help that the location of the frozen lake feels more like a soundstage than any actual location, and setting most of the action at night allows the production design team to cut corners that hopefully no one would notice.
As the Grabber, Hawke is lost in the role, and by that, I mean it feels like he isn’t there. This is an odd thing considering he gets top billing. Most of the time, it felt like literally anyone could be wearing the creepy mask, and Hawke just provided the voice of the haunting antagonist. Because Thames and McGraw are so good in these movies as siblings, it feels like they should be in a better story. Unfortunately, this sequel reminded me that the first movie offers better ideas that are conveyed in original ways, whereas “The Black Phone 2” feels like leftovers that are thawed out, reheated, and served up with little regard to how good they will be.
RATING: **
