Black Phone 2 (2025)

Black Phone 2: Playing The Hits | 3.5/5

Written by Noah Dietz: 10/22/2025

Three years after the smash hit of The Black Phone in 2022, Scott Derrickson returns with a sequel that, for better or worse, cements this as “A Nightmare On Elm Street, but serious.” Dream demon Freddy has been replaced with dream demon Grabber, but the cartoonish kills of mid-late era Freddy haven’t quite arrived yet. I’ve seen several people compare this to A Nightmare On Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors, and I think that’s pretty apt. We still have minimal complications from ongoing films, and The Grabber hasn’t undergone the changes that late stage Freddy had seen so he’s still really mean. The comparisons continue when Gwen (Madeleine McGraw) is able to take some things out of her dreams, even if we don’t really make much of it. There are scary dreams that hurt you in real life, a taunting killer who lives in them, and a team of hunted kids that stop him. A Grabber on Elm Street, if you will.

Based about four years after the first film, this feels like things have simultaneously changed a lot and also not at all. Jeremy Davies as Terrence Blake is a huge example of this. A confusing amount of this film was dedicated to cleaning up his presence in the first film, going to lengths to show him as a fully sympathetic and redeemed character compared to the physically and emotionally abusive alcoholic he had been in The Black Phone. He’s referred to as three years sober, and some of the choices made make it clear that we’re supposed to believe he’s done significant work. This doesn’t land for me though, especially with a mid-film scene all but explicitly excusing him for his behavior previously. People can change, but even comparing his actions in the first five minutes of the original to how he’s treated in Black Phone 2 is incredibly jarring. Other than that, and similar situations with The Grabber, what frustrates me about a lot of the sequel is that it seems like it ran out of ideas a little too early. I was invested for the first half of the film, but as they arrived at Camp Alpine, things started to slow down for me. I really enjoyed a slew of the scenes we get here, but some of the character and backstory choices made from this point on are frustrating. Gwen’s Christianity for example, which was an intrinsic part of her character in the first film, feels confusing and out of place here based on surrounding conversations.

Universal Pictures

I shouldn’t move on from this point without stating directly that I do love how this movie looks. I have to commend Scott for all his dream sequences, a standout expansion in this film. Much like Sinister, his short in V/H/S/85 (which I mostly didn’t care for, to be honest), and the dreams in the first Black Phone, Scott’s Super 8 snuff film stylings are a standout highlight here, as well as a marked improvement on the same styled scenes from the first film. The dream sequences are incredibly visually distinct from the rest of what we have, and the various transitions from dreams to the waking world are really fun. The matte darkness and inherently lower visual depth the shooting style brings allow Hawke and the various ghosts we are visited by to emerge from mere feet away, and vanish just as easily. The way warm colors glow while others feel desaturated lend to the coldness of the camp, and they’re by far my favorite parts of the film. The artistic vision behind these choices is clear and strong, regardless of how often Derrickson has come back to it.

I enjoy the updates to some of the character design choices made here. The Grabber’s winter attire is a lot of fun, and the changes to his mask combos work for me a lot more than I had worried. When he says, “I am a bottomless pit of sin,” I have no issues believing that based on how he looks. The way he fades into the inky blackness is creepy, and Hawke’s physical acting keeps The Grabber cemented in your head as an eerie figure that feels foreign to his environments. That said, he’s another victim of confusing character choices. Backstory that wasn’t fully needed combines with a connection that cheapens the original. The passively evil energy he embodied has been replaced with a more expository, vocal anger, and an annoyance at Finn for having put him down before. His character simplifications are handwaved away with a conversation about hell burning away all the goodness in him, leaving only the bad. My primary complaint with that is he was already bad in a much more compelling way. As much as I love his philosophising about the afterlife, it’s hard not to see it as the clear first step toward the inevitable Flanderizing of potential sequels. The changes aren’t all bad, per se, but I fear simplifying The Grabber’s motivations while also moving him to a kids’ camp pushes him dangerously close to “Jason who talks” territory. 

This is part of my greater issue with the film. The first feels like there’s a lot of world surrounding what we have on screen in a way that the sequel doesn’t quite nail. Our setpieces are cool, Alpine is a great spot to spend time in, but the world just feels smaller by getting trapped there so quickly. Frankly, it’s not even that the story is bad. I enjoyed a great deal of what was brought to the table here with the exception of the aforementioned Grabber backstory addition. By the end of the film it just feels like we could have gone further with some of our story beats, or at least have been meaner to some of the people present. I’m aware the Elm Street comparisons have been beaten into the ground by myself and others, and looking back at the Elm Street films, it’s not like they managed to maintain a consistent level of quality. We could do far worse in the 2020s to have an Elm Street knockoff that maintains this type of quality, even if it means we stray away from the stronger, original vision. I just feel it’s harder to justify it while it’s happening, even if I might enjoy it down the line. If nothing else is gained from any of the Black Phone films, at the very least Mason Thames has been brought to the public. The man is a great actor, and his performance in this film shows that off in a wonderful way. I’m looking forward to what he brings in the next decade, and I hope he’s able to maintain the upward momentum that’s hinted at here.

At the end of the day I’ll admit this is another entry in my one-sided fight with Scott Derrickson. He will never know who I am, and I will watch every movie he puts out and leave with incredibly mixed feelings. Scott’s staying safe and playing the hits on this, but if you like what he brings to the table, that’s not remotely a bad thing. Personally, and perhaps despite how some of this review reads, I enjoyed the majority of my time with Black Phone 2. It’s not groundbreaking, and I don’t think it can support a third sequel without fully jumping the proverbial Elm Street shark, but if you enjoyed the first, I don’t think you’d be disappointed in the second.