The Black Phone 2 (2025)

 

Starring: Mason Thames, Madeline McGraw, Ethan Hawke

Directed By: Scott Derrickson

Where It’s Available: A Theatre Near You, on-demand streaming at home digital rentals 

The original ‘Black Phone’, released in 2022, was a rare beast in horror films - a truly original idea. Ghost stories have been around even longer than horror movies, but I don’t ever recall the ghosts being the ‘good guys’ in a slasher/horror genre picture before (we’re not talking about Casper here). In case you missed it (spoiler warning for the end of the original Black Phone - which is actually fantastic and well worth a watch if you have not seen it) - at the conclusion of the film, Finn Blake (Mason Thames) had escaped from the clutches of The Grabber (Ethan Hawke) thanks in no small part to his sister, Gwen (Madeline McGraw). In the course of the escape, Finn kills The Grabber (good riddance) and also helps avenge the five dead children who preceded him in being caught in The Grabber’s clutches.

‘Black Phone 2’ opens, as you would probably expect, with Finn doing… not particularly well. The amount of trauma that kid had to endure has broken him and he’s taken to self-medicating with marijuana as well as lashing out at anyone who looks at him funny (a nice early moment has him laying absolute waste to another kid and then reciting verbatim the dialogue that his friend Robin shared with him early in the first film). He’s hearing phones ringing everywhere he goes. He’s struggling at school. He’s… not in a good space. PTSD was absolutely a thing in 1982, but we as a society didn’t quite grok what it meant just yet.

His sister, Gwen, has also begun having the same kind of vivid dreams that she had in the first film (the grainy VHS film grain that they use when she’s navigating a dream sequence is a nice visual touch), this time centering on a Christian camp in the mountains of Colorado.

The two teens end up travelling to the camp to try and figure out the source of the dreams - accompanied by Gwen’s new love interest / Robin’s younger brother, Ernesto (Miguel Mora). I’ll not get into spoilers - they run into The Grabber (Ethan Hawke is ‘literally’ wearing the mask on the movie poster, so that can’t be considered spoilery) and they spend a few tense days at this camp in the wilderness (the setting plus the time period is clearly an homage to ‘Friday the 13th’). There are also some subtle (and a few not-so-subtle) nods to ‘A Nightmare on Elm Street’ and ‘The Exorcist’ among others. As a result, while the first film felt almost revolutionary, this one comes across much more derivative. 

The Good: Mason Thames has grown up a LOT in the three years between the first and second film. The kid is a bloody heartthrob now and just bleeds - pardon the pun - leading man energy. He’s going to be a megastar. His acting in this film is intense, moody and disaffected - he is infinitely believable as a young man who has seen far too much horror in his short life. There is one scene near the end that made me tear up - which I really was not expecting in a genre film such as this. Mark it down - this kid will win awards.

The Bad: Don’t take this the wrong way - I love Ethan Hawke. He’s one of my five favourite actors of all-time, and his work in the first film was one of his best roles (he played so against type, with understated malice and menace). This time, though..? He’s almost a caricature. It’s a rote, pedestrian, by-the-numbers slasher role that he plays ‘big’ and chews too much scenery - which is definitely not ‘bad’ - but is still disappointing when you hold it up compared to the first movie.

The Ugly: For a horror film, this movie is actually relatively tame in terms of gore-factor, shooting more for the supernatural ghost story creep than straight ahead slasher gore fest. But with that said, there are a couple of deaths that make you go ‘eww’. One person is literally chopped up and burned in a furnace… and then someone else steps in the pile of viscera. So… yeah.

Is It Safe For Kids: I watched ‘A Nightmare on Elm Street’ when I was twelve years old and I turned out to be a perfectly well-adjusted-if-cynical movie reviewer. So if you have a savvy tween? Maybe. Nothing younger than that, though.

The Verdict: The original ‘Black Phone’ will go down as a modern horror classic, so a follow up was all but assured. The biggest criticisms I’ve seen lobbed at this film through The Discourse primarily centers around the fact that, for a horror film, it’s just… not that scary. And I can’t really argue with that. There are some moments, sure, but by and large it’s relatively tame. BUT! If you look at it through the lens of a character drama set amongst a supernatural backdrop, it plays a lot better. The two young leads carry heavy weight as they navigate a treatise on trauma and loss. The third act in particular is one of the strongest pieces of character work I’ve seen in a film this year - genre be damned. While it won’t rewrite the playbook quite like the first movie did, this is a very solid sequel, well worth your time and money. 7.5/10