Black Phone 2 is a 2025 horror film directed by Scott Derrickson and starring Mason Thames, Ethan Hawke, Madeleine McGraw, Miguel Mora, and Jeremy Davies. This is a direct follow up/sequel to ‘The Black Phone’, but with a much different twist. Not to give away all my thoughts too early, but this is exactly how I think a sequel should be done in a lot of ways, especially a horror sequel. It continues the story with the characters we already established in the first film but gives us a vastly different setting and setup to the chaos making it feel like its own film with its own identity entirely. You definitely need to be familiar enough with the first movie or have seen it recently to get the most out of this film because there’s a lot of callbacks and direct references to events in the first story, but that’s not to say they’re really much alike outside of the literal continuation of the story.
The first film feels like a child abduction story and ‘The Grabber’ was actually loosely based around John Wayne Gacy in the film. The film took place in 1978 which was the same year Gacy was caught, it followed a suburban neighborhood resident who only abducted young-teenage age boys like Gacy, he was a birthday magician with a van like Gacy was a birthday clown, and he buried the bodies in the basement of the house…again like Gacy. This film felt much more like a traditional slasher flick, taking place at a camp and dealing with even more supernatural qualities because The Grabber was killed at the end of the first one so he’s doing all his torment now from beyond the grave. This is going to become a cozy, wintertime horror flick for me now though, add it to the small collection. There aren’t enough horror films that take place in cold and wintery settings. Don’t get me wrong, I love ‘Krampus’ and ‘The Thing’ as much as anyone else but I watch those movies every December-January. This film takes place at a camp as I mentioned, but unlike traditional camp slasher flicks, it’s a winter camp up in the mountains and they’re snowed in from a blizzard. No bikinis, rope swings, or jumping off the docks to be found here; just winter coats, frozen over lakes, and ice skating. That’s not a lie either, apparently The Grabber was a phenomenal ice skater in life because he tears it up out there a few times in this film. That was something some people took issue with online that I saw, but it worked for me. It was another gruesome visual element and how often have you ever seen your slasher villain out on the ice and doing it well? I can’t think of any time before this so bonus points for the originality there as well.
This film certainly has Scott Derrickson all over it, with the Super 8 quality Gwen dream sequences looking just like the home videos in Sinister, but it also felt like it borrowed some elements from other classic horror films also and it did it well. There were certainly moments with ‘Friday the 13th’ vibes with the camp and the lake playing a factor in the climax, ‘The Thing’ vibes with the small group stuck and secluded because of winter weather, but the unavoidable and most noticeable one that even non horror fans would likely catch on to is the similarities to ‘A Nightmare on Elm Street’. The Grabber is dead, but he can still communicate with Finney through the black pay phone at the camp and he can still communicate with Gwen through her dreams because she has that special psychic ability. He’s also the most powerful in dream form and can hurt you for real when he has you pulled into his nightmare hellscape. I actually really enjoyed that aspect and thought they did it well and thoughtfully, but you just can’t use nightmares in horror movies in that way anymore without getting the comparisons to Freddy because they kind of cornered that market long ago. But also, there hasn’t been a Nightmare on Elm Street movie in 15 years at this point and in my humble opinion there shouldn’t be another one if Robert Englund isn’t going to play him again, so are you just going to let the nightmare troupe in horror films die with it or are you going to use it still in a thoughtful manner and just take the Freddy Krueger comparisons? That’s just my take on it though.
I may have overall enjoyed myself more with this film that the first Black Phone, I am not dying on that hill just yet because I’ve only seen 2 one time but there was more here for me to chew on, I felt like as a horror fan. The first one was very well done, but it was a smaller and more contained story and setting and this film dove deeper in the vastness of setting, characters, and supernatural aspects. I also feel like a big part of it was I enjoyed The Grabber’s character more in this film. He looked a lot cooler and more menacing as a dead guy and in the first film he was just like a child abductor/murderer, whereas this movie he felt more like an actual evil supernatural villain. I know a lot of people liked the first film and I did as well, and I certainly know everyone won’t like this one as much as the first film like I did, but I think it’s definitely worthy of giving a watch. Especially here in the heart of Halloween season, or like I said if you can’t catch it here Halloween week it’s also a great wintertime watch and I’ll probably be giving it a rewatch sometime this winter myself.
That’s all for this one though folks! Make sure to like my page on social media or bookmark the website to keep up with all my latest content on horror films (both old and new), NFL football, WWE wrestling, and occasionally more! Be good to one another out there and Happy Halloween!
