'Black Phone 2' - Not the worst attempt to make a franchise...

Josh
Nov 11, 2025
4 min read

Scott Derrickson (2025)

Blumhouse wants to make this another Insidious.

Original movies are good. Finding good original movies can be challenging. Good original horror movies have had some solid resurgence with ‘elevated’ horror. The Black Phone (2021) was not ‘elevated’ horror. It felt like a solid throwback horror movie. With the focus on children and their abuse, goofy villains with masks and ghosts, you would’ve thought a lost Stephan King book had been found and instantly converted into a screenplay. Based on the novella by ~~Joseph King~~ Joe Hill, The Black Phone is a solid movie about family violence, standing up for yourself and the hereditary cycle of alcoholism or mental illness. And of course beating up Ethan Hawke with a phone. It’s a story that was wrapped up nicely. So why did we get a sequel? Good question, reader, glad I got you thinking. Is it because Scott Derrickson and C. Robert Cargill wanted to expand the lore set up by Joe Hill? Maybe. Did we need a backstory on the Grabber and the mother of the children from the first movie? No. Am I glad we got a new Nightmare on Elm Street movie and got to see Ethan Hawke beat up Christians? Yes. And then they looked at the title and said, "Drop the 'the'... it's cleaner". And so we have Black Phone 2.

Spoilers btw.

*Black Phone 2 (2025) courtesy of Blumhouse.*

Taking place 4 years after Finney (Mason Thames) bashed The Grabber (Ethan Hawke), he’s taken to anger, solving issues and trauma through violence. While his sister, Gwen (Madeleine McGraw), has been having dreams and conversations with a young girl from a winter camp. Following in their mother's footsteps, Gwen has acquired this bootleg Shining ability. Continuing to investigate the dreams of this camp, as each vision contains the murder of young campers. Like Weapons (2025), it’s made very obvious that people are in a dream sequence, removing the fake-out dream sequence jumpscare issue. Black Phone 2 takes from the director's previous work, Sinister (2012), and takes the Super-8 film aesthetic to show when we are and aren’t in a dream. You can argue that A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984) did it better with visual and logic cues that you’re in a dream but I found the 8mm to be visually refreshing and disturbing at times.

While at camp, they find out that The Grabber used to work there and murdered a group of children. And the young girl who had been called Gwen in her sleep was their Mother from the past. Convincing the camp owners that they aren't crazy, Mando (Demián Bichir), Mustang (Arianna Rivas), Barbra (Maev Beaty), and Kenneth (Graham Abby), they attempt to free the spirits of the dead so The Grabber's curse can be lifted from the camp. This link between The Grabber and the Mother made my eyes roll so far in the back of my head I almost lost them. What I liked about the first Black Phone was the stranger danger period. The fact that Finney got abducted was just bad luck, and he was lucky his sister had the Shining. Giving backstory that links The Grabber to the Mother, where she had also had dreams of the murders and tracked him down, leading to the murder-suicide set-up, felt… hacked together. As the story is more focused on Gwen, who shares this psychic link with her mum, I understand why they would want to focus on this relationship. I just wish it wasn’t related to the Grabber. If anything, this feels like Blumhouse trying to make another Insidious franchise. A movie that had a decent first entry but had nothing backing it up to make a franchise from, but, oh boy, did they try.

This felt more like another attempt at a Sinister rather than a sequel to Black Phone, as most of the horror came from the small Super-8 vignettes, with a mystery plaguing the real world. At no point did I feel scared or tension for the characters, especially during the ending when trying to free the boys from the ice lake. Which I imagine is reference to the Grabber being in the frozen lake within the 9th layer of hell as depicted in Dante’s Inferno. Although I would’ve thought he would be stuck in the 7th layer for Violence. As well, I felt the message for Fin’s arc was a bit muddled as they seem to lean into his anger and how he seems to resort to violence for everything. But that turns out to be the best solution as he beats up the spirit?? Of The Grabber, which felt strange. I would’ve been nice if the sister had to use her Shining wits to defeat him, which they lean towards but ultimately it’s Fin that takes him out with a couple of swings of his fists.

The added complexity to the murder mystery story, the pacing suffered once they were at the camp. The nightmare aspect wasn’t interesting enough and The Grabber didn’t have a presence like a Freddy Krueger. Nor do these segments have the energy for a Nightmare segment but it does have a strong sense of atmosphere. With the constant wind and snow and strong use of blues.

I would highly recommend Black Phone. I would softly recommend Black Phone 2. I would recommend going in not expecting a traditional sequel but more of an extension of the lore. If you find the curse-word champion sister annoying during the first act, then I would recommend stopping, as her vocabulary will get old pretty quickly. If you’re looking for something to settle in and watch on a cold winter's night, it’s definitely a mood setter. Just don’t expect to remember this one for days after watching it.