The Black Phone, released to theatres in 2022, was not the type of film that needed a sequel in any form. It was a perfectly contained, suitably unnerving horror effort that made the most of its short story origins (Joe Hill wrote the original prose in 2004). As we all know in the business of movies though that if yours makes a mint at the box office, it’s a fair sign you’ll be granted a sequel, and due to Scott Derrickson‘s original making 10 times its budget, Black Phone 2 went into a relatively quick turnaround. But just because you could, does it mean you should?
In the case of Black Phone 2, the answer is, surprisingly, yes.
Atmospheric, bold in its violent content, and utilising a neat riff on its Nightmare On Elm Street-like dynamic, Black Phone 2 sees Derrickson – who returns to both direct and serve as screenwriter alongside C. Robert Cargill – understandably adapt to a new mentality, which makes sense given that his central killer figure – The Grabber (Ethan Hawke, sparingly used to grand effect) – died at the end of the first film. But given The Black Phone‘s supernatural inclinations, Black Phone 2 paints itself out of any corner this fact may cause by having The Grabber torment his defeaters from beyond the grave.
Those defeaters would be teen siblings Finn (Mason Thames) and Gwen (Madeleine McGraw), who overcame The Grabber by making the most of Gwen’s growing psychic abilities – an affliction she inherited from her late mother. The black phone of the title was the vessel used between The Grabber’s former victims and Finn in the original film, and here, he’s unfortunately still receiving a heft of phone calls – though he’s less inclined to help now. With this reluctance, it makes sense that Derrickson and Cargill’s script largely shift their focus to Gwen, whose now even more enveloped in her ability, communicating with spirits without the need of a phone.
Whilst this sequel continues the very real threat of violence that laced its predecessor, Black Phone 2 deals more so with the trauma of surviving brutality and how it can impact beyond the individual. It also comments on generational damage, with Gwen’s connection to her late mother (Anna Lore) becoming an emotional anchor across the film’s 114 minutes. And whilst the film’s content would have always earned a stirring reaction, there’s an added sense of investment due to the fact that the film’s depictions of violence involves children, with Derrickson expressing quite the dauntless swing in how he presents such visually on screen; it’s sparing but brutally effective.
Gwen’s latest spout of dreams – or nightmares, more correctly – suggest a connection between her, her mother, and three of The Grabber’s previous child victims, with all signs pointing to a Christian winter camp; in her dreams, her mother calls her from the camp grounds, whilst the victims all float underneath the ice of a frozen lake, indicating their bodies are still “resting” there, unbeknownst to the camp workers. With Finn and her wannabe-boyfriend Ernesto (Miguel Mora) in tow, Gwen travels to the camp ground, Alpine Lake, hoping to convince the supervisor, Armando (Demián Bichir), of their plight.
Armando isn’t exactly buying what Gwen and Finn are selling, and neither are his holier-than-thou co-workers, Kenneth (Graham Abbey) and Barbara (Maev Beaty) – these two earning some needed comedic mileage out of their Christian views pertaining to Gwen’s “devilish” soul – but once she starts throwing around names and situations that only Alpine Lake are privy to, as well as showcasing that if she’s injured in her dreams, the wound expresses in reality (just like Elm St‘s Freddy Krueger), they all quite quickly fall in line, leading to a suitably exciting, grisly-minded finale that lets Derrickson’s penchant for uncomfortable violence take flight.
With Black Phone 2 embracing the notion that all bets are off and no one ever truly dies in this universe, it’s a film that feels dangerous at every turn, which in itself only further enhances its emotional core; like its predecessor, this is a film that gives us characters we care about. Absolutely indulging in its 1980s aesthetic – grainy Super 8 footage and a scratchy design aid the nightmarish sequences, whilst Atticus Derrickson (Scott’s son) laces the soundtrack with a hypnotic, almost uncomfortable dreamlike score – Black Phone 2 is a sequel that shouldn’t have worked nearly as masterfully as it does, to the surprising point that it overtakes the original – no small feat in itself, given how expertly that film voided itself of genre predictabilities in spite of such recital familiarity.
FOUR AND A HALF STARS (OUT OF FIVE)
Black Phone 2 is screening in Australian theatres from October 16th, 2025, before opening in the United States on October 17th.
