Spoiler Alert / Mature Content: This review may include plot details and adult themes. Reader discretion is advised. This site discusses horror films, which may not be suitable for all ages.

When The Black Phone came out in 2021, my first thought when it was over was “That was incredible.” My second thought was “They are going to franchise the hell out of this.” Based on the story by Joe Hill in his short story collection 20th Century Ghosts, The Black Phone was a huge success for everyone. Capturing that again would be tricky but not unheard of, there was only one problem.

There wasn’t a book or short story to draw from for Black Phone 2 (no “the” this time, it’s cleaner), but Joe Hill did have an idea and he passed it along to Scott Derrickson and C. Robert Cargill, who got to work on the script right away. Derrickson again co-wrote and directed, Cargill co-wrote, and they were off to give us the second chapter in the life of The Grabber. I guess, more like, the first chapter in his afterlife? That feels more correct.

The main players from the first go ‘round returned this time as well: Mason Thames (Finny), who has been very busy already this year taming dragons; then there’s Ethan Hawke (The Grabber), Madeleine McGraw (Gwen), and Jeremy Davies (Terrence) closing out the regulars. We got a handful of new faces as well: Demián Bichir was incredible as Armando, the owner of Alpine Lake Camp, the hot spot for the action in this film. There was Mustang (like the car? No, like the horse) played by Arianna Rivas, who was absolutely delightful compared to our last two knuckleheads—Maev Beaty (Barbara, don’t you dare call her Barb) and Graham Abbey (Kenneth). Are we all set now? Here we go.

The film opens with a mysterious phone call, introducing us to a character that we don’t know in a place we’ve only seen in trailers, and ends just as abruptly, leaving us confused and drawn in. At the time, I thought “Huh” but looking back, it made me move closer. Seconds later, we are outside of a school (much like the first), Finny having grown quite a bit, this time handing out a beating, the target of harassment since he’s now known as the kid who killed The Grabber. Of course, Gwen is there to break it up, and we move forward with the story.

This time around, the crux of the tale centers around Gwen, still having her dreams that now seem even more like cries for help. They’re leading her somewhere (Alpine Lake Camp), but at first, she’s very confused. Finally figuring out that the three boys she keeps being visited by were at a camp once worked at by their mother, the kids (Finny and Gwen) decide to get jobs there and get to the bottom of whatever is going on. Finny himself is still being haunted by ringing phones, and I can’t blame him. The sound of a phone doing anything but notifying me of a text sends chills down my spine too.

Both Finny and Gwen are working through and dealing with their trauma from the first film the best they can. For Finny, that means self-medicating and trying his best to ignore what happened. For Gwen, that means facing all of the questions head-on and trying to make it all make sense. Everyone has their process. They arrive at Alpine Lake Camp in the middle of a snowstorm, and other than that being a weird time to send campers into the woods, the place seems okay. Until the dreams for Gwen ramp up, that is. Now that she’s back to where it all began, the nightmares come fast and hard.

I know a lot of people picked up a Freddy Krueger vibe from the trailers, but that isn’t what’s happening here. Yes, The Grabber is reaching out and attacking Gwen in her sleep (all to hurt Finny), but it’s more like a ghost attacking someone at their most vulnerable—attacking her in her mind when it is at rest. The choice to make those scenes play out and look like home movies, I think, was brilliant; it separated the two worlds in a visual way that really stood out and let us know where we were at all times. And that’s the thing: the entire movie was visually stunning. The color palette, the lens choices, Derrickson really kicked it up a notch (not that he hasn’t always been great) and made something absolutely beautiful to look at. The film is gorgeous.

The story was okay too. C. Robert Cargill and Derrickson did write a decent script. I’m not taking away from the writing, but the film did lack slightly in the story department. If we are comparing it to the first movie, The Black Phone was far more compelling and much scarier than Black Phone 2. However, that doesn’t make Black Phone 2 a bad movie by any stretch. It was just a small step backwards in this humble horror movie lover’s mind.

The cast all did fantastic work, with a couple of standouts. Thames was excellent as Finny, letting us live with him in his struggle to accept what happened to him in the first film, until he finally breaks down and decides to move on. McGraw was great as Gwen, trying to keep her brother together while dealing with some amazingly dark things all on her own. And Bichir was so good as Armando—I wasn’t quite sure what to think about that character until the end because there were so many layers. When enough of them were peeled back, though, he ended up being my favorite.

Honorable mention to Maev Beaty as Barbara. I hated her character so much—not because Beaty did a bad job but because she did such a fantastic job that Barbara was so insufferable that I actively rooted for something to happen to her. It didn’t (too badly anyway), and she eventually came around, so it’s fine.

This film was a great time at the movies. Not everything has to be perfect for it to be entertaining (and this movie was not perfect), but it hit enough of the right notes to be a very worthy sequel to one of the best horror movies to come out in the past 5 years. Black Phone 2 should be a movie that everyone has on their list of things to see (if they haven’t already), and now that it’s available on digital, it should be fairly easy.

If you like mystery and horror smashed together, if you like your gore with a little bit of thought behind it, this is something you should definitely see. It doesn’t pull any punches when it comes to the visuals (some things were downright nasty, but I digress), and it seems like they really put a lot of care into making it all make sense. That isn’t something that can be said for 80% of the horror sequels that exist out there.

I don’t know if they’ll make a third, they leave it pretty definitive at the end (The Grabber is defeated for a second time and rests at the bottom of a frozen lake) but that’s what I thought after the first one. Final verdict: Black Phone 2 definitely needs to be seen if you liked the first and love horror. At this point, there’s literally no reason not to give it a try. It has everything you need, just don’t watch it alone.