We Need to Talk About The Grabber's Return. This Black Phone 2 Review Dials Into a Flawed Sequel.
- Oct 18, 2025
- 3 min read
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When The Black Phone hit screens in 2021, it was a lightning-in-a-bottle moment. It was a tight, terrifying, and surprisingly heartfelt thriller that felt perfectly self-contained. So, I have to admit, I met the news of a sequel with a healthy dose of skepticism. But director Scott Derrickson is back, bringing Mason Thames (Finn) and a front-and-center Madeleine McGraw (Gwen) with him for another round. This time, the fight against Ethan Hawke's "The Grabber" isn't confined to a basement—it's gone fully supernatural. This Black Phone 2 review digs into whether this unexpected follow-up, now playing in theaters, manages to recapture the magic or just cuts the line.
The first film was a masterpiece of claustrophobic tension, a missing-person thriller seasoned with a dash of the supernatural. Black Phone 2 throws that recipe out and goes full-tilt horror. We pick up three years later, with Finn (Thames) still processing the immense trauma of his ordeal, which the film handles with a respectful touch. But the real focus is on his sister, Gwen (McGraw), whose psychic "dreams" from the first movie are becoming far more vivid and terrifying. She's getting visions of a new string of abductions at a snowy winter camp, and The Grabber seems to have found a way to haunt from beyond the grave.
I went in ready to dismiss this as a cash grab. The first movie ended so definitively. And let's be honest, the new premise—a killer who attacks you in your dreams, and if you die in the dream, you die for real—is... well, it's A Nightmare on Elm Street. It's impossible not to see the "Freddy Krueger" of it all, and it feels groundbreaking... for 1984. Yet, I was surprised by how much passion is still on screen. The film trades the first movie's suffocating tension for a wider, snowier, and more spiritual exploration of trauma. The real question is whether the amazing character work can save a story that feels both predictable and borrowed. My final verdict on that is... complicated.
