Black Phone 2
Mason Thames and Ethan Hawke return for a serviceable sequel, albeit let down by banal dialogue.
Dial-a-demon: Mason Thames and Ethan Hawke
Courtesy of Universal Pictures.
The Black Phone seemed to close the door behind itself entirely; its terror left an unfortunate memory, a thing of the past. But Black Phone 2 proclaims that nothing can be buried for good. Four years after Finny Blake’s kidnapping and narrow escape, his family’s survival depends on whether or not “dreams are just dreams.”
The boyish, innocent Finny has grown into an angsty loner who is tortured by traumatic visions from his experience with the Grabber (Ethan Hawke), the shyness that defined him in the original replaced with a quiet, masculine rage. He is accompanied by his rehabilitating father and Gwen, his straightlaced, though psychic, sister. Of course, our iconic villain returns – this time in dreams. He has lost his sadistic restraint and found a ruthless vengeance, doing all he can to cause harm. His only obstacle is the slowly thinning barrier between the living and the dead.
Unlike most other horror sequels in the genre’s history, this one has the guts to evolve from the original film. In every sense of the word, Black Phone 2 is colder than its predecessor. It abandons the dirty, underground claustrophobia of the original for a vast, frozen mountainscape. The brutal realism that made the original so disturbing is dropped; the sequel functions entirely in the supernatural. Despite this difference, the conceptual space it travels has been well explored: teenage girl terrorised by a dream killer, a family fearing for their life in the isolation of snowy, Colorado cabins. We’ve seen these films, felt these fears before. It clearly respects its origins and embraces its tropes, but builds the film out of conventions which make it often painfully predictable. It is a horror film of ghosts outside windows and under beds, large empty cabins, and flashlights panning slowly in the dark.
However, the film does truly excel with its recurring sequences of Gwen’s dreams and sleep paralysis. These visions are the means by which the past infiltrates the present. The strange and distant atmosphere of the dreams gives a mysterious feel which is lacking at times with overly blunt exposition. The stillness of these sequences allows for real, yet simple, horror. The rest of the horror, the horror of their clearer reality, ends up quite mild and weak with its restrained, often rough, CGI.
Despite the compelling themes of trauma recovery and grief’s permanence, the dialogue falls flat on its face. The non-verbal acting is believable enough, but the conversations drag on to the place you knew it was headed from the start. Being spoon-fed the subtext of each scene just makes you start to tap your foot until the danger returns. There are a few exceptions, brief moments of beauty which just make you think about how moving the film could be if it spoke naturally.
The film is a distant relative of its first iteration, built out of recycled horror tropes, though the final collage is engaging. It oversimplifies its characters and damages its potentially substantial story with uninspired dialogue. Black Phone 2’s ambitious reinvention can feel weak with its vapid exposition, but its stylized rhythm makes it an exciting experience anyways. It’s at its best when it’s stumbling around the darkness, afraid, with only its nostalgia and frantic eye candy.
SIMSIM HEGAZZI
Cast: Mason Thames, Madeleine McGraw, Jeremy Davies, Demián Bichir, Ethan Hawke, Miguel Mora, Arianna Rivas, Anna Lore, James Ransone.
Dir Scott Derrickson, Pro Jason Blum, Scott Derrickson and C. Robert Cargill, Screenplay Scott Derrickson and C. Robert Cargill, Ph Pär M. Ekberg, Pro Des Patti Podesta, Ed Louise Ford, Music Atticus Derrickson, Costumes Amy Andrews.
Blumhouse Productions/Crooked Highway-Universal Pictures.
113 mins. USA. 2025. UK and US Rel: 17 October 2025. Cert. 18.
