Black Phone 2 Rings Twice, Still Terrifies

Black Phone 2

★ ★ ★

Black Phone 2 is a throwback to 1980s horror, calling up a new kind of terror that fuses the nightmares of A Nightmare on Elm Street with the brutality of Friday the 13th. While both are arguably slasher films, here we’re treated to a far more effective psychological version that dives into the lingering PTSD of horrific childhood trauma. In some ways, this film bests its original, while at other times hangs too long in therapy—forgetting to move the story forward.

The film starts three years after Finney (Mason Thames) escapes the clutches of a serial child-killer called The Grabber (Ethan Hawke). He had been held in captivity in The Grabber’s basement for several days, awaiting his likely death. But in the basement was a black phone, and despite it having no cord, voices of dead boys who’d been killed in the basement before him were able to call and help him escape. His sister Gwen (Madeleine McGraw) also possessed supernatural gifts and was instrumental in locating him. By the end of the first film, The Grabber was dead.

Mason Thames as Finney and Madeleine McGraw as Gwen
© 2025 Blumhouse Productions/Crooked Highway/Universal Pictures

Now Finney is dealing with unchecked trauma and Gwen is trying to help him sort through it. But she starts having extremely powerful, vivid dreams, causing her to sleepwalk. If she gets hurt or injured in the dream, the wound manifests physically. The whole family is also dealing with their mother’s suicide, something dad Terrence (Jeremy Davies) blames himself for.

Gwen’s visions lead her to convince Finney to take a job with her as camp counselors-in-training at a lakeside Christian camp deep in the Colorado woods. It’s a camp her mother had also gone to when she was a girl. At the camp is a phone booth next to the lake. It hasn’t worked in a decade, but Finney hears it ring, answers the phone and speaks to three boys who went missing years ago. He also receives calls from The Grabber, who now has the power to terrorize kids from the grave.

Madeleine McGraw as Gwen and Ethan Hawke as The Grabber
© 2025 Blumhouse Productions/Crooked Highway/Universal Pictures

The Grabber can also injure Gwen in real life, through her dreams. Likely, if she dies in her dream, she dies in the real world.

This film isn’t afraid to dive deep into the psychological effects of violent childhood trauma, and it doesn’t let the characters off easily. They have to battle evil in the real world, the world beyond, and recognize the mental damage that’s been done to them. It’s a battle that tests them separately and as a family. To get too deep into the metaphorical aspects of the film would be to spoil the journey.

There are moments in the film that nearly grind the pace to a halt, where the script doesn’t know quite what to do in its most emotionally damaging and therapeutic moments. At times it goes too deep, while at others not deep enough.

There are some fantastic uses of cinematography and gritty footage. When Gwen dreams, it plays like we’re watching Super 8mm home movies—a medium great for family nostalgia. Here it adds to the tension. That dirty film grain look somehow puts us in Gwen’s shoes and makes her dreams just a touch more terrifying.

Madeleine McGraw as Gwen
© 2025 Blumhouse Productions/Crooked Highway/Universal Pictures

In the end, it’s a film about a family trying to overcome a devastating tragedy and pick up the pieces of their shattered lives while battling supernatural evil. It resonates, because when families fall apart, it can feel like something otherworldly is pulling the strings. The film is weakest when it misfires in this representation but is at its strongest when it makes its point. Had all cerebral circuits been firing consistently, this movie would be a psychological horror masterpiece. It’s no magnum opus, but still spins a good yarn.

If you’re stuck in some dude’s basement and a black phone with no cord starts ringing, answer it. The same rings true if your nightmares lead you to a lakeside Christian camp—don’t ignore the obsolete phone booth by the lake. Especially if it hasn’t rung in a decade.