“Black Phone 2” (2025) starts four years after the events of “The Black Phone” (2022). Gwen (Madeline McGraw) is still having strange dreams and feels like she is going crazy. Finn (Mason Thames) is self-medicating and lashing out. Eventually Finn’s love for his sister helps him follow her example and face traumatic events instead of ignoring them. They go to Camp Alpine Lake Youth Camp in the Rocky Mountains to uncover the truth about their unfinished business with the Grabber (Ethan Hawke). History repeats itself, and just like with the “Sinister” franchise, the sequel pales in comparison to its predecessor, and it would be better if director and cowriter Scott Derrickson and cowriter C. Robert Cargill never made it.
Gwen is the main character, but “Black Phone 2” dilutes the strength of a strong story arc from feeling insane to becoming empowered. This natural complement to Finn’s story in the first film should be a strong one, but there are a lot of competing story lines. Derrickson and Cargill are fascinated with Finn. Unlike the first film, Finn seems like the cool kid and the bully. Thames is also naturally strong in the moments of silence and is great at aura farming when there are no lines. Who does not love brooding leads? Except he is not the lead, and it is a problem. Finn’s story is still too strong, and it feels as if a Christian production made this film to save Finn’s soul and get him off the wacky tobacky (called the devil’s lettuce in this film). Because Gwen’s already implicitly saved, the film prefers mentally torturing her to supplement the scares.
It is not McGraw’s fault that Gwen never feels like the protagonist. McGraw has a Natalie Portman-esque presence. When she is finally permitted to take center stage, especially in her scenes with Ana Lore, most viewers will find it challenging not to bust out the tissues and start crying. Derrickson and Cargill dip into the horror classic playbook for terror and sentiment with the latter as a naked and unashamed manipulation from “The Sixth Sense” (1999) playbook. It is so effective that it is almost possible to forget that most of “Black Phone 2” is middling if you are feeling generous and outright weak sauce if you are not. Unfortunately, she gets saddled with a romance story that also gets Finn to talk about his past in the form of Ernesto or Ernie (Miguel Mora), a little brother of one of the victims who spoke to Finn on the titular phone, as if another boy needed to distract audiences from her story. In addition, she gets saddled with the worst clunky dialogue to signal that it is the Eighties. “I hear they cost a mint.” “That would be radical.”
Gwen has dreams of past crimes as if her eyes are a horror director’s Super 8 camera. She witnesses the murder of three kids, and the kids try to give her clues. When she sleepwalks, she sees the dream world and the waking world as if she became a part of the Super 8 camera’s footage. In these dreams, the trio mostly terrorize and physically hurt her. The tone shift gets tiresome after awhile even if you love found footage. After “Shelby Oaks” (2025), shifts in format need to suck viewers in, not push them away, and making the dream world grainy had a distancing effect instead of making moviegoers want to lean in. It is as if Derrickson saw “Longlegs” (2024) while binging “American Horror Story” and could not resist dipping into the “Sinister” (2012) well.
Finn gets mostly boundary respecting phone calls on out of order pay phones. With all due respect, these ghosts were very “Five Nights at Freddy’s” (2023), which wore it better while “Black Phone 2” is a basic bitch. Is the afterlife misogynistic? Why the ghostly disparate treatment of the living? Well, it is not long before the Grabber decides to join in, and he is an equal opportunity sadist. While everyone is making instinctual comparisons to Freddy Kruger (Robert Englund), it feels unfair that the three victim ghosts do not get any Jason Voorhees comparisons, especially with their association with Lake Maru, which is located on the campgrounds. Is the Grabber scary? No offense to the great Hawke, but no, ghost Grabber is not as scary as his living incarnation though seeing him run around with a huge leather belt in his hand is way more frightening than a hatchet. It is hard to scare while skating, and “Black Phone 2” is begging to be spoofed with the Grabber dressing in sequins and feathers while doing triple axels. If he could find an evil ghost woman, they could do a pairs routine. It is not sinister at all, and while he has some solid moments when he finally gets physical, especially in his showdowns with Gwen, by then you may be too sleepy to appreciate it. Also, once there is a showdown, Gwen needed to have a River Tam (“Serenity,” “Firefly” reference) moment more sustained than a few seconds and being a helper.
Let’s talk about the setting. Ever since “The Shining” (1980), getting snowed in has been a horror staple so terrific choice, but the writers needed to lead with more information about how a formerly closed winter camp, which I never knew was a thing until this movie, was the site of multiple missing children reports yet able to reopen with no history of the camp recorded anywhere!?! Where is the research at the library’s microfiche reviewing newspaper stories sequence? And one of only three people who knew details about the camp is still there, and there is not one moment where that person is not eyed with suspicion?!? The power of Demian Bichir apparently seeps into his character’s pore because the current camp owner has a criminal record, which should not be a stigma, but have you met people? It is a nonissue. Also how do you have a cowgirl, his niece, Mustang (Arianna Rivas), and they literally do nothing of note with her? Mustang!
Meanwhile Kenneth (Graham Abbey) and Barbara (Maev Beaty), who is hella judgmental about a little girl too scared to stay alone at a warehouse size cabin at the child murder camp, is totally cool with an ex-con and a hot girl on a horse who speaks Spanish. I don’t think that kind of person exists. While everyone will certainly appreciate the pains that the filmmakers took to offer a wide spectrum of Christians from hateful to laudable to choose from, it needed to be recalibrated or removed because as it stands, it is as awkward as the random glowing cross on the camp’s platform stage. When did Colorado become Times Square?!? What is happening? Either lean into the silliness but just dropping it in seriously as if it is organic was another distraction from the central story. It felt like a set up suggesting that the siblings are answers to prayer and the new Sam and Dean Winchester, which would be great if finessed a bit more. As it is, it seemed thrown together or butchered in editing. Dry begging for another sequel?
“Black Phone 2” consists of great parts, but it never coheres behind its strongest trajectory. Please no more sequels! It will be a cold day in hell before Derrickson and Cargill find a way to make lightning twice. On the other hand, maybe it is the broken clock rule. If it happens three times, it is a pattern.
