It’s been over 3 years since The Black Phone came out and became easily one of my favorite Blumhouse movies ever produced. I love the performances, the plot, the suspense, the score, and I just think it’s a perfectly crafted and directed film. I’ve always been a fan of Scott Derrickson and his work in this movie and Doctor Strange. But let’s just say that 2025 is not his year… at least not in my opinion. The Gorge was a fine yet quite forgettable film that was just dumped on streaming with almost no marketing, and now, I just experienced what might be the most pointless sequel I’ve ever seen.
“As Finn, now 17, struggles with life after his captivity, his sister begins receiving calls in her dreams from the black phone and seeing disturbing visions of three boys being stalked at a winter camp known as Alpine Lake.”
Everything was wrapped up after the first film; I could’ve never imagined how they would pull off a sequel to that — but here they are. Black Phone 2 feels like a movie that was never intended to be made. It’s like they obligated the director to make it — it feels forced and just so pointless. But as we know, Blumhouse will always make sequels to movies that made any money. Their rule is basically: if it’s profitable, there will be a sequel. And they don’t care whether the movie needs one or not — money defines everything. And I just think that’s a stupid way to think, and that’s why Black Phone 2 genuinely sucked.
After M3GAN 2.0 being nothing like its predecessor, The Black Phone 2 manages to do almost the same thing. It’s obviously gorier and scarier than the first film, but now there’s no kidnapping or anything like that. Ethan Hawke’s Grabber appears in a little girl’s dream every single night. We both know that this film references the old Nightmare on Elm Street classic, but it just feels too generic and unoriginal. The Black Phone 2 is a nearly two-hour-long movie, and for at least an hour and a half of that runtime, all we see is Mason Thames’ little sister dreaming about the Grabber and running from him every single night. Yes, that’s all you see for most of the movie.
If you enjoy a lazy, boring, and unoriginal script with stupid subplots, then you’re in for a treat. The thing is, they know damn well this movie never needed a sequel — so what did they do? They started adding lore to the first movie, things that were never mentioned before, and just started making stuff up to justify why this sequel exists. For example, events that happened in the first movie were somehow changed or re-explained here in a way that was clearly not previously planned, but instead improvised at the last minute just to make the sequel make sense.
The cinematography, editing, and jump scares are great! Don’t get me wrong — this film has a lot of gore, and it is truly a hardcore horror movie. But it should’ve just been made as an original feature, because this is not a real sequel to The Black Phone. Even the characters felt different from how we knew them. It’s truly pathetic.
But in a year full of terrible sequels, Black Phone 2 is just a forced attempt to continue a story that, despite being scarier and gorier, is so pointless you’ll keep wondering why they even made it.
Black Phone 2 releases in theaters on October 17.
