Horrorfest 2025: Black Phone 2

Black Phone 2
Written by Scott Derickson and C. Robert Cargill
Directed by Scott Derickson
Starring Mason Thames, Madeleine McGraw, Jeremy Davies, Demián Bichir and Ethan Hawke
USA, 2025

I have a false memory of watching the first BLACK PHONE movie for a previous Horrorfest, so that was one reason I wanted to watch BLACK PHONE 2 for this one. The second reason was because the first one was good. And the final reason was because I love Ethan Hawke.

Turns out, I did NOT watch BLACK PHONE for a previous Horrorfest. I definitely watched it, though. I guess it was one of the ones I wanted to see so much and was so bored that I couldn’t put it on a list and save it for later.

The sequel both honors the first and moves in new directions, with it keeping the villain, The Grabber (Hawke) dead, but moving him into the realm of supernatural dreams, kinda like Freddy, only less funny. Also, of the brother/sister duo who starred in the first, this time we focus more on the sister and her telekinetic abilities, unraveling a mystery linked to the siblings’ dead mother and the twisted history of The Grabber. This all unravels at an abandoned, snowed-in Christian sleepaway camp on the edge of a frozen lake.

Even though it tries to be a good sequel by both continuing the story of the last movie and taking it in new and interesting directions, this one was not as good as the first one, primarily because the pacing is off. It’s a little too long for a horror flick and, while slow-moving horror often works well, especially when it comes to suspense, this movie lacks the ticking clock of the first one, robbing it of some urgency, despite the attempts to raise the stakes with bad weather and more supernatural goings-on.

Part of the pacing problems involves long, repetitive dream sequences in which our heroine goes walking in her sleep and sees visions. Every now and then they’re intense and interesting. But there’s long stretches of nothing, in which lo-fi filmmaking techniques, like muffled sound and grainy picture, combine to try to kind of give the whole thing a weird analog/found footage horror quality. It’s kind of useful in the sense that it shows us when we’re in a dream state and when we’re not, but it’s also a little too reminiscent of indie-darling SKINAMARINK which solely consisted of these types of shots. So it comes off like a polished Hollywood flick trying to go for indie cred. The first one kinda had that vibe, too, with the authentic 80s setting, but it didn’t go this far into aping someone else’s filmmaking style.

To be fair I guess director Scott Derrickson dipped into this before with SINISTER, but there the analog thing had a built-in reason, cuz the movie was about a guy who finds a bunch of 8mm films. Here’s it’s just like, “Hey, look at me! I’m a filmmaker!” Or something.

I mentioned an authentic 80s setting in the first one, which is sort of till around for this one, though some tin-eared dialogue from our teen girl protagonist, mostly taking the shape of convolutedly specific/creative insults, ring totally (and increasingly) false. She also has a personality that seems a little all over the place, ranging from trying to keep her brother in line and out of fights and passing on grass to openly telling basically authority figures to fuck off right to their faces with very little (to no?) provocation. Who is this person? She contains multitudes.

I suspect The Grabber (though maybe not Ethan Hawke) will go on to star in innumerable future BLACK PHONEs but this one was only okay, so they probably won’t be any better. The first one’s still good, though!