Bad dreams haunt 15-year-old Gwen as she receives calls from the black phone and sees disturbing visions of three boys being stalked at a winter camp. Accompanied by her brother, Finn, they head to the camp to solve the mystery, only to confront the Grabber — a killer who’s grown even more powerful in death.

Scott Derrickson reunites with author Joe Hill and star Ethan Hawke to dig deeper into the mythos of The Grabber, and the result is a bigger, darker, more supernatural horror story, one that doesn’t simply repeat the scares of the first film, but twists and expands them into something far more sinister.

Set in 1982, the film picks up with Finney (Mason Thames), the lone survivor who escaped The Grabber’s basement hell. But survival hasn’t brought peace. Finney is still being hunted, if not in body, then in memory. He’s restless, angry, slipping into violent outbursts as the trauma keeps its claws in him. Meanwhile, his younger sister Gwen (Madeleine McGraw) continues to be haunted by chilling visions, visions that point to the origins of The Grabber’s evil.

When Gwen’s dreams lead the siblings to the eerie Alpine Lake Camp: a faded summer retreat holding more secrets than smiles—the film shifts from suburban terror to a wintry, isolated, emotionally charged ghost story. The camp becomes a character in itself: abandoned cabins, icy docks, dark forest lines, and a history that refuses to stay buried. It’s the perfect stage for vengeance to rise from the cold.

Derrickson leans hard into 1980s horror styling here. Think fog-drenched nights, haunting analogue synth, gritty camera texture, killer silhouettes appearing where they shouldn’t be. The suspense isn’t loud or cheap, it creeps. It stalks. And when the jump scares come? They hit like a shovel to the ribs.

But the smartest and most compelling shift in Black Phone 2 belongs to Gwen. Madeleine McGraw steps forward as the emotional core and supernatural conduit of the story. Her psychic abilities become the narrative’s driving force, and watching her push back against a horror that wants to consume her is gripping, raw, and genuinely unsettling. McGraw delivers a performance that’s both tender and terrifying, cementing Gwen as one of the most interesting young horror protagonists of the moment.

And then there’s Ethan Hawke. If The Grabber was frightening before, he’s absolutely nightmare-fuel incarnate now. No longer a man, but a vengeful spectre dredged up from Hell itself, The Grabber returns as a demon wearing the memory of a monster. Hawke’s physicality, voice modulation, and twisted emotional texture make him horrifying to watch—you cannot look away. His mask, his grin, the quietness of his cruelty… It’s chilling in all the right ways.

Black Phone 2 doesn’t try to out-shout or out-shock the first film — it evolves it. It widens the lore. It deepens the emotional impact. It gives the survivors agency—and then tests that agency against a horror that refuses to stay dead.

With Halloween looming, horror fans are in for a treat. Black Phone 2 is cold, eerie, grief-stained, and deeply atmospheric; the kind of horror film that lingers like smoke in your clothes and whispers back to you after the credits roll.

Image: Universal Pictures

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Finney Shaw, a shy but clever 13-year-old boy, is abducted by a sadistic killer and trapped in a soundproof basement where screaming is of little use. When a disconnected phone on the wall begins to ring, Finney discovers that he can hear the voices of the killer’s previous victims. And they are dead set on making sure that what happened to them doesn’t happen to Finney. Starring four-time Oscar® nominee Ethan Hawke in the most terrifying role of his career and introducing Mason Thames in his first-ever film role, The Black Phone is produced, directed, and co-written by Scott Derrickson, the writer-director of Sinister, The Exorcism of Emily Rose and Marvel’s Doctor Strange.

When it comes to filmmakers who continue to find new avenues to take the horror genre in, Scott Derrickson is a top-of-mind choice. With his work on the likes of Sinister and The Exorcism of Emily Rose, Derrickson has proven he can explore new corners of the genre, and he crafts a thoroughly unique, and claustrophobic cinema experience with The Black Phone. Tapping into fears of stranger danger, imprisonment and the horrors that hide in our community, Derrickson delivers a retro horror film of intense psychological fear and shocking gore factor, and fright fans looking for a good scare will be impressed. Adapted from the short story by noted horror author Joe Hill, Derrickson sticks close to the source material, and its intriguing to see how he mixes in different subgenres within The Black Phone to bring something new to the big screen.

Derrickson’s work on The Black Phone gave me an impression similar to what John Carpenter did with the original Halloween. Watching this film I felt as if it might have been a work that Carpenter himself would have made had he been given the opportunity back in the late 1970s. The atmosphere, threat and menace of The Black Phone made me liken it to a ‘terror film’ and its cat and mouse game between young kidnap victim Finney Shaw (Mason Thames), and The Grabber (Ethan Hawke) has a real menace and antagonism to it. Derrickson finds many different avenues to create scares. Whether they be childhood trauma and abuse, the presence of this dark and twisted killer or the film’s use of the supernatural, there are moments that will make you jump out of your seat.

Stepping into the role of the fiendish, crazy menace of the film’s lead villain, The Grabber, is Ethan Hawke and he falls into this creepy role completely. Hiding himself behind a demonic mask, The Grabber is a serial killer who is adding to his collection of dead children, and he’s a very scary man. There’s no motive for The Grabber’s actions given in The Black Phone, and this makes his presence that much scarier. He just does. He’s raw impulse, and you never come to understand the thought or rationale behind the horror, and this makes his actions all the more sinister. Hawke disappears behind The Grabber’s mask, and he’s a monster in this one. Toying with Finney through a series of twisted ‘games’ The Grabber is ritualistic in his actions, and Hawke doesn’t hide away from the evil that this character represents.

Throughout this film, you’re kept on the edge of your seat. With a developed shorthand as director and performer, Derrickson and Hawke keep the audiences in a vice of suspense and The Black Phone’s third act hits with the force of a hatchet, causing you to be in a fit of panic in the film’s final moments. The Black Phone is an inventive and different kind of horror picture, and fans of the genre will feel a shiver of fear run up their spines with this one.

Image: Universal Pictures

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