‘Black Phone 2’ has a bad connection

[Rating: Minor Rock Fist Down]

This one stings. 2025 has been a pretty great year for horror. Unfortunately, this one fails to meet even the expectations set by the first flick. But that’s the way it goes, right? Some sequels know exactly what made the first movie work and get right to it. Then there is Black Phone 2…which takes the long, long, long way to get there.

Director Scott Derrickson reunites with Ethan Hawke for another round of supernatural scares and psychological trauma, but this time, despite some fantastic visuals, the film just never seems to make the connection this time around.

Picking up after the events of the 2022 flick, the sequel follows Finney (Mason Thames) and his sister, Gwen (Madeleine McGraw), as they are still haunted by echoes of the original “Grabber” murders. This time, the plot centers around Gwen, who has started having dreams about her mother and her connection to a string of murders that took place at a winter camp in the 60’s and it may be tied to The Grabber. So, of course, they pack up and head to the camp with the plan of posing as counselors to try and solve this decades old mystery.

The plot itself isn’t the problem, it’s the fact the characters — and honestly, the writers (including Derrickson, Joe Hill and C. Robert Cargill) are constantly making decisions and choices that make zero sense, starting with going to the camp. In the middle of winter. Without spoiling the process of the plot, it just never makes sense. It’s a direction that only sets up the visuals of the second half of the movie. Not a bad thing because the movie looks freaking incredible, but the suspension of disbelief is really tested here.

Derrickson knows how to craft atmosphere. The cinematography is moody, the sound design keeps the nerves humming, and there are flashes of the dread that made the original so effective. I always wanted a Friday the 13th movie set in the middle of winter and this movie only proved that would be a lot of fun. Now, The Grabber is no Jason Voorhees and Black Phone 2 will never be compared to any Friday the 13th flick. Unfortunately this sequel won’t commit to the fun of it’s surroundings and confuses slow burn for slow everything. Instead of tightening the noose, it drifts through subplots that never pay off, and spending far too much time winking at other horror movies, Nightmare on Elm Street, Silence of the Lambs, Friday the 13th, The Shining, Sleepaway Camp — just to name a few. It’s overlong, overthought, and under-scary.

Hawke, mercifully, is used sparingly — more shadow than man, which works for and against the film’s favor. Even as The Grabber haunts our protagonists from beyond the gave, at times he feels absent. Thames and McGraw, returning as Finney and Gwen, do solid work grounding the story, though the script doesn’t give them much to do beyond déjà vu. The new supporting cast fades quickly into the background, and the movie’s attempt to expand the mythology of the phone feels like an afterthought instead of a revelation.

What made The Black Phone so much fun was its simplicity, a focused, claustrophobic story that mixed coming-of-age resilience with supernatural menace and of course, the chilling performance from Ethan Hawke…remember when he was in The Explorers? (I loved that movie)…Anyways, Black Phone 2 forgets that lesson. It spends too much time explaining and not enough time terrifying. The scares, when they finally arrive, are well-executed but too few, like reminders of several better films you could be watching instead.

Black Phone 2 looks amazing and has several moments of genuine, eerie tension and strong performances, but its pacing kills the suspense. It’s not terrible. Not bad. And that’s what is frustrating. It’s almost good. It’s just too long, too slow, and too scattered — it’s a sequel that keeps ringing without ever saying anything worth hearing.

Tagged as: 2025, Black Phone 2, Ethan Hawke, Madeleine McGraw, Mason Thames, Movie Review, Scott Derrickson