Ethan Hawke as the Grabber in 'Black Phone 2' | Image: Sabrina Lantos/Universal Pictures and Blumhouse

‘The Black Phone 2’ Rings Again—But the Line’s Gone Cold

By Chad Kennerk - News

Published: 18 Oct 2025

Readtime: 5 min

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The first Black Phone was an outlier in the Blumhouse canon — a rare piece of prestige horror that fused intimate character work with supernatural dread. Director Scott Derrickson and co-writer C. Robert Cargill return to the receiver (sans the ‘The’) with Black Phone 2, a kind of Freddy Krueger meets The Thing sequel that melts away much of what made the first film unique.

Mason Thames as Finn in 'Black Phone 2' | Image: Sabrina Lantos/Universal Pictures and Blumhouse — Mason Thames as Finn in ‘Black Phone 2’ | Image: Sabrina Lantos/Universal Pictures and Blumhouse

Cold Call

Four years after escaping the Grabber’s basement, Finney ‘Finn’ Blake (Mason Thames) is now an angry teenager haunted by his past. Between smoking weed and fighting anyone who looks at him funny, he’s still living in the shadow of a monster. His sister Gwen (Madeleine McGraw) swears by her prophetic dreams, which now pull her towards Alpine Lake, a snowbound Christian youth camp in the Rockies.

When she starts seeing visions of missing boys and the phone begins to ring again, the siblings must face off with the Grabber’s ghost, who lures them to the camp from ‘the other side’. The image of a haunted winter camp gives Derrickson an evocative new canvas, and one that he largely uses to great effect. Along with cinematographer Pär M. Ekberg, Black Phone 2 returns to an analogue aesthetic, shooting dream sequences on Super 8 and Super 16 for that haunted-home-movie texture.

Gwen (Madeleine McGraw), Mustang (Arianna Rivas) and Ernesto (Miguel Mora) in 'Black Phone 2' | Image: Sabrina Lantos/Universal Pictures and Blumhouse — Ethan Hawke as the Grabber in ‘Black Phone 2’ | Image: Sabrina Lantos/Universal Pictures and Blumhouse

Ghosts of a Better Film

The Black Phone was never a film that screamed for a sequel, but in bringing back the Grabber, the creative team had a chance to do something riveting with his return. What begins as an exploration of how trauma follows survivors like a curse soon slides into all the familiar slasher-territory tropes.

The Grabber is now a ghost powering a blasé mystery that’s largely resolved with a few exposition dumps. Ethan Hawke, who was so magnetic in the first film, is given shockingly little to do here. The Black Phone previously saw Hawke as a human monster in a performance of queasy stillness and sadistic charisma that lingered long after the credits. As a ghost, he’s been reduced to the stock slasher spectre which Derrickson once avoided. Freddy Krueger has been done to death, and this frozen Freddy adds little life.

Finn (Mason Thames) and The Grabber (Ethan Hawke) in 'Black Phone 2' | Image: Sabrina Lantos/Universal Pictures and Blumhouse — Finn (Mason Thames) and The Grabber (Ethan Hawke) in ‘Black Phone 2’ | Image: Sabrina Lantos/Universal Pictures and Blumhouse

The Living and the Dead

Black Phone 2 swings between genuine dread and some unintentional comedy. Thames does his best to give Finn a credible wounded toughness, but both he and McGraw’s Gwen suffer from a frozen-over script that leaves logic behind. Lakes do thaw in Colorado, which sounds like a much better time to search for bodies.

Audiences are willing to suspend their disbelief, but only when it aligns with the logic of the world that’s been created. There’s just one too many coincidences here, too. And who leaves for summer camp at nightfall in a blizzard? Newcomer Miguel Mora (as Ernesto, brother of one of the Grabber’s victims) adds some needed warmth, and there’s welcome gravitas from Demián Bichir as Mando, the camp’s caretaker.

Executive Producer Jason Blumenfeld, Arianna Rivas, Mason Thames, Miguel Mora, Madeleine McGraw and Director Scott Derrickson on the set of 'Black Phone 2' | Image: Sabrina Lantos/Universal Pictures and Blumhouse — Executive Producer Jason Blumenfeld, Arianna Rivas, Mason Thames, Miguel Mora, Madeleine McGraw and Director Scott Derrickson on the set of ‘Black Phone 2’ | Image: Sabrina Lantos/Universal Pictures and Blumhouse

Madeleine McGraw and Mason Thames on the set of 'Black Phone 2' | Image: Sabrina Lantos/Universal Pictures and Blumhouse — Executive Producer Jason Blumenfeld, Arianna Rivas, Mason Thames, Miguel Mora, Madeleine McGraw and Director Scott Derrickson on the set of ‘Black Phone 2’ | Image: Sabrina Lantos/Universal Pictures and Blumhouse

Time to Hang Up

There’s a version of this movie that’s a smaller, more psychological story about inherited trauma. A character-driven sequel about the scars of survival ultimately collapses into outright camp. There’s a The Thing That Couldn’t Die poster hanging in Finney’s room that feels like an omen for a sequel that can’t quite justify its own resurrection. That’s frustrating because Black Phone 2 had the bones of something rare in exploring how Finn eventually confronts his trauma or becomes the monster himself.

To Derrickson’s credit, the film looks great, and his Super 8 nightmares still pulse. The problem is largely that of a lack of a credible narrative, and the performances ultimately reflect that. The mystery never deepens, and the discoveries are only mildly chilling. There are some superior moments, but as the film lunges into its overblown finale—who knew you could punch a ghost?—everything ends up on thin ice. The phone may still ring, but by the end, it’s all just static. — ★★☆☆☆