Black Phone 2 | The Deight Night Review
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| Black Phone 2 (Scott Derrickson, 2025, Universal Pictures) |
In Scott Derrickson's second horror film of the year (following Apple TV+'s The Gorge), the director returns audiences to the world of Joe Hill's short story The Black Phone. Years after escaping the basement of the Grabber (Ethan Hawke), Finney Blake (Mason Thames) is still suffering from the trauma and struggling to adjust back to normal life. Meanwhile, his sister, Gwen (Madeleine McGraw), is haunted by lucid dreams witnessing the brutal murder of children in the snow with cryptic messages. In a bid to solve the mystery of her dreams, Gwen and Finney find employment at a secluded Church Youth Camp in the middle of the snowy mountains of Northern America where they not only find out secrets about their family but of the infamous Grabber as well.
While Ethan Hawke's most frequent directorial collaborator is Richard Linklater, it's fair to say that the esteemed performer seems to have a growing fondness for Scott Derrickson and his increasingly terrifying worlds. With Black Phone 2 being their third project together - after the underrated Sinister and, of course, The Black Phone - it's become very clear that the pair are a winning combination. All the best scenes of this film feature Hawke hamming it up as the malicious killer, The Grabber. He steals every single scene he's in, even if he's only a voice coming through the phone. Hawke's gravelly voice and pertrfying delivery add such a brilliant layer of terror to a character who's otherwise quite empty and generic (in this entry of the series at least). Indeed, Derrickson knows exactly how to shoot The Grabber to make him as sinister as possible, every single time Hawke enters the frame he's given a fantastically ominous and menacing entrance - which is in keeping with Blumhouse's attempts to make this character as synonymous with horror as the likes of Michael Myers.
Derrickson's directing does all of the heavy lifting for the terror of this film, however, as his script doesn't produce anywhere near as much fear as could be brought to this heavily atmospheric picture. For instance, a lot of the first act is (very slowly) setting up the reasons for Finny and Gwen going into the snow to find The Grabber. All of the fear here comes from Gwen's dreams and not much else, and while these are filmed exceptionally well, they don't pose much of an actual physical threat - which is a running theme throughout the film, a lack of threat. While the Grabber does have some scary scenes after he's fully introduced into the narrative and the initial realisation of his purpose is a terrifying thought to be sure, he doesn't cause as much harm as he likely could. With the film being 18 rated, it's perplexing that this wasn't fully taken advantage of with The Grabber's vengeful fury being used to its full horrifying potential.
Likewise with the script, there are some interesting ideas at play but they are utterly drowned by convoluted sequences that make little sense half the time, along with really shoddy dialogue and some rather poor acting outside of Ethan Hawke. There's a scene in particular where a realisation is shared vindictively amongst the whole Blake family and what should have been a very emotional scene is ruined by increasingly drawn out dialogue and stale acting from all involved. Thankfully, the scene that precedes this is most likely the film's best and adds some layers to both films of this series. The scene in question unsurprisingly contains Ethan Hawke.
Black Phone 2 tries very hard to make a slasher icon out of The Grabber, now giving him the powers of Freddy Krueger and making his mask even more a part of his personality. With the right script, there's definitely a place for this new kid on the block (provided he's still played by Hawke) but sadly this entry doesn't do him any favours. The power couple that is Derrickson and Hawke can't save what's ultimately a very slow, meandering roller coaster of rare great horror moments and all too frequent predictable and wooden cliches.
⭐⭐1/2
