Film Review: The Black Phone 2 黑色電話2 (2025) - USA
Reviewed by Andrew Chan (Film Critic Circle of Australia)
I rated it 6.5/10
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Scott Derrickson returns to the chilling world he conjured in 2021, dialing up “The Black Phone 2*” This sequel, like a persistent echo on a disconnected line, proves the story isn't quite finished, yet struggles to recapture the primal, basement-bound terror that made the original resonate. It avoids the crass pitfalls of lesser horror follow-ups, offering polish and committed performances, but finds itself tangled in its own expanding mythology, sacrificing the suffocating simplicity that was its greatest strength.
The film’s saving grace, its beating (if bruised) heart, is Madeleine McGraw’s Gwen. Derrickson wisely shifts the narrative weight onto her young shoulders. No longer merely a plot device whispering cryptic warnings, Gwen’s psychic abilities become the film’s engine and its emotional core. McGraw delivers a performance crackling with fierce determination and vulnerability; her grief and resolve feel palpable, anchoring the film even as it drifts into murkier supernatural waters. Mason Thames remains a solid emotional anchor as Finney, but this is Gwen’s show. Ethan Hawke, returning as the nightmare incarnate known as The Grabber, haunts primarily through Gwen’s psychic visions. While his presence remains unsettling, a magnetic distortion field of pure malice, the dreamlike context slightly diminishes his terrifying immediacy. He’s a phantom menace now, potent but less viscerally present than the concrete monster of the first film.
And herein lies the sequel’s central tension, its struggle between intimacy and expansion. Where the original thrived on the terrifying simplicity of a boy trapped in a soundproofed hell, fighting for survival with only ghostly whispers for aid, “The Black Phone 2” feels compelled to build a universe. We delve into the origins of the cursed phone, the nature of the spirits tethered to it. This added lore, while ambitious, acts like a pressure release valve on the suspense. The chilling mystery that made the first film so potent – the why and how of the phone’s ghastly operation – is diluted by explanation. Furthermore, trading the claustrophobic, sun-bleached dread of the Denver suburbs for a winter youth camp setting offers striking visuals – snow-laden pines, frozen lakes – but loses the suffocating, everyday horror of a predator operating within a recognizable community. The camp feels like a stage, less grounded, less real.
Derrickson’s direction remains assured. The pacing rarely sags, and he conjures several genuinely chilling sequences, particularly those leveraging Gwen’s psychic flashes and the film’s creative, dream-logic visuals. The kills possess a grim inventiveness. Yet, the film often feels less like pure horror and more like a dark, supernatural coming-of-age tale, bordering on a grim superhero origin for its young protagonists. The "rules" governing the phone and the spirits feel frustratingly inconsistent, bending to serve the plot rather than establishing a coherent, terrifying framework.
“The Black Phone 2” is far from a dropped call. It’s a well-crafted, often entertaining sequel buoyed by McGraw’s exceptional performance and Derrickson’s confident hand. Fans of the original will find enough connective tissue and chilling moments to satisfy. Yet, it lacks the raw, visceral punch, the masterful balance of grounded terror and supernatural dread, that made its predecessor feel like lightning in a bottle. It expands the world but diminishes the mystery, trades suffocating intimacy for snowy spectacle, and ultimately feels like a perfectly serviceable, sometimes thrilling, but ultimately less essential chapter. It rings, but the connection isn't quite as clear, nor the dread quite as profound. (Neo 2025)