My quick rating - 6.5/10. Four years after escaping The Grabber (Ethan Hawke), Finney Blake (Mason Thames) hasn’t exactly found peace. Trauma clings to him like static, and his sister Gwen (Madeleine McGraw) is once again haunted. This time, not by her brother’s disappearance, but by vivid nightmares and strange phone calls echoing from beyond the grave. When the black phone starts ringing in her dreams, revealing visions of three boys being stalked at a winter camp, the siblings are pulled back into a chilling new mystery. One that ties the past and present together with icy fingers.
Scott Derrickson returns to the director’s chair, and from the opening payphone scene in 1957, he sets an unsettling tone. Creepy old music hums beneath the credits, the camera draped in nostalgic grain that looks straight out of a lost 70s horror reel. The result? Dream sequences that feel ripped from grindhouse cinema—grainy, grimy, and effective as hell. They’re sometimes violent, always unnerving, and they carry that surreal edge that made the first Black Phone so memorable, but this time, the dial points hard toward horror.
Where the original leaned more on psychological tension, its horror largely anchored by ghostly whispers, this sequel feels like Derrickson took a page from A Nightmare on Elm Street’s first outing. Before Freddy turned into a quip machine, remember when he was just pure nightmare fuel? That’s the tone here. There are no sarcastic one-liners, no breaks for levity—just cold dread and the sense that evil doesn’t stay buried. The Grabber, now known as “Wild Bill,” is back, and Ethan Hawke plays him with the disturbing charm of a homicidal gym teacher. Even though he doesn’t appear much until the final act, his presence dominates the film. When he’s on screen, it’s terrifying, proof again of how well Hawke understands this masked monster.
Derrickson’s craft is as sharp as ever. The camerawork captures the suffocating atmosphere perfectly, using archival-style footage and jittery edits that keep the audience uneasy. The visual design—especially in the dreamscapes—is top-notch, merging color and grain in a way that feels both vintage and nightmare-fresh. The effects are convincing, the makeup and blood are brutal but not excessive, and the tone stays grounded enough to avoid cheap jump scares.
Where Black Phone 2 falters is in its necessity. The first film wrapped things up neatly, almost perfectly, and this follow-up clearly had to stretch to find a reason to exist. Thankfully, the story’s direction, tying the supernatural to legacy trauma and exploring how evil evolves, gives it a new angle. It just doesn’t land with quite the same weight. The scares are solid, but not skin-crawling; the tension simmers, but rarely boils over.
Still, I thought it was a quality sequel that manages to respect the original while experimenting with tone and style. The expanded mythos, the dreamlike horror, and the eerie return of The Grabber all make for an unnerving experience, even if it feels like familiar territory. Between the effective direction, gritty visuals, and powerhouse performances, Black Phone 2 earns its dial tone. Just don’t expect it to haunt you long after it hangs up.
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