After killing The Grabber (Ethan Hawke) and escaping his dungeon with the help of the divine dreams of his sister, Gwen (Madeleine McGraw), Finny (Mason Thames) struggles to live life as a normal seventeen year old.  As for Gwen, her dreams have continued and begin to intensify around a snowed in camp in the Colorado mountains and a young woman, Hope (Anna Lore), who calls out to her claiming she received the phone number in her own dreams, by three young boys carving the digits in the ice.  Gwen has had similar dreams, only for her, the boys in her carved letters as they floated to the frozen surface of the lake.  Together, with her brother and her not-boyfriend, Ernesto (Miguel More), they travel to the camp to find the source of the dreams and solve the mystery.

Scott Derrickson directs Black Phone 2 from a script he cowrote with C. Robert Cargill, blowing open a rather cut and dry thriller from 2022 and delivering for Blumhouse one of their only hits so far in 2025.  Running 114 minutes, a surprisingly short only 11 minutes longer than its rather grounded predecessor, Derrickson has his work cut out for him as he brings back The Grabber from the dead and takes what was a mostly tangible, one-off thriller and retrofits it as a springboard for a supernatural franchise.  It proves to be a near impossible task, but Derrickson’s skill shines through despite some questionable choices with how he handles The Grabber, but ultimately crafting a chilling ghost story.

While Finny led the first film, Black Phone 2 centers much more on Gwen, though her brother still plays an important role in what transpires.  Thames, to his credit, has grown into a steady foundation for which to build out this story, but unfortunately, he is underwritten as a character with simple and shallow motivations.  It makes it hard to invest into these characters as they do not really seem to have grown much from where we last saw them; a sensation further perpetuated by Derrickson and Cargill’s script that retains more of the really cringe-worthy dialogue that they saddle poor McGraw with, here.  Thankfully, she too has grown as a performer in the intervening years and because she has more to do, she is able to build an actual character and pull off the intention of the line if not so much the actual words on the page. 

Taking on a more prominent role, Gwen is the one that sets the trio on their journey to Camp Alpine Lake, and once there, her dreams help to frame the mystery of the missing boys but as they grow closer to getting their answers about what happened to The Grabber’s first victims, The Grabber, with new powers of his own, is able to cross over from the afterlife into the realm of dreams and from there directly affect the present. It soon becomes clear that he is targeting Gwen with the intent to kill her.  Some of these sequences where The Grabber is manipulating real life are quite horrifying and well done, especially as Finny and the gang begin to realize that they can still fight against The Grabber even if they cannot see him. 

The problem here comes in that the film relies a little too heavily on these dream sequences.  Cinematographer Pär M. Ekberg is not looking to play any tricks on the audiences as the dreams all have a grainy, handheld quality to them, but the sheer volume of them continually drives both stories to a halt as they flip flop back and forth.  Add to this the extended runtime, Black Phone 2 does not move at the clip to have the same thrills of the iconic horror movies of which it is borrowing so much from; namely, the A Nightmare on Elm Street and Friday the 13^th franchises.  Some of this is because The Black Phone, now a potential franchise player of its own, is not a classic slasher as those two touchstones, but even if it does want to prioritize its lore moving forward, Derrickson realizes the iconic importance of The Grabber and desperately tries to thread the needle to bring both schools of thought around horror together.  That being said, while The Grabber is seen showing off some new tricks, both of the supernatural variety as well as being a skilled ice skater and all around imposing physical threat, Hawke is hardly given as much to do and this change in screen presence really dilutes what made his such a fantastic villain in the initial entry.  This is all a symptom of the creative team being stuck serving two masters, and as such, while there are many commendable aspects of this film throughout, it never quite comes together as cohesively as we would like it.

As for the thrills, there is a good bit more of the supernatural in this latest installment than the prior, and with it, Derrickson increases the amount of blood, guts, and gore, the upsetting nature of which is further amplified given that the victims are all young children.  He also really wisely utilizes the snow Colorado mountain settings, with locations scouted by Catherine Crawford’s team, taking a classic slasher locale and showing it to us in a whole new and unsettling way.  This is not a fun filled and idyllic summer turned on its head, but it was a frigid hellscape from the moment our trio rode through Camp Alpine Lake’s gates in the middle of the night while Pink Floyd’s “Another Brick In The Wall (Pt. 1)” plays on the soundtrack it a great needle drop.  This artic chill makes the night time scenes – of which there are plenty – all the more frightening, and as the moonlight reflects up from the snow on the ground, Derrickson and Ekberg are able to utilize shadows in a unique and exciting way.

Black Phone 2 is still something of a misfire simply because it an installment at the crossroads of a franchise that is not quite sure of what it wants to be.  With the rather definitive ending of the first film, that this sequel exists at all is a surprise in and of itself, especially given the modest if not blockbusting box office totals of the 2021 kidnapping thriller.  Focusing more on the kids and expanding the world of the film, Derrickson and Cargill do craft an enjoyable story that will keep horror heads looking for their ghosts and the gore hounds in the audience amused, even if not enthralled.  It is a far more complicated story than before, and it does rely rather heavily on its predecessor but is not so alienating to first timers to the series.  It is hard to tell where this story will end up going next, but it is clear from this entry that “dead is just a word” and no one is safe from The Grabber, not even in their dreams.