The Grabber Is Back In Chiller Of A Sequel

The menacing evil villain of 2022’s hit horror film, Black Phoneis back for a sequel even though he was killed off in the first film. Of course that has never stopped filmmakers of these fright films before and it hasn’t stopped director Scott Derrickson and co-writer (with C. Robert Cargill) here. So in the tradition of Friday The 13th, A Nightmare On Elm Street, Halloweenwith a touch of Stephen King and others, The Grabber returns, with Ethan Hawke’s screen demon calling in the role from Hell and causing all sorts of new mayhem. You might throw in another masked horror movie, the relatively obscure 1983 Curtains which Derrickson credits for particular influence (it starred Samantha Eggar whose death was ironically just reported today).

In this one (from a story by Joe Hill who is actually Stephen King’s son) it is four years after the events of The Black Phone in which still somewhat traumatized 17-year-old Finn (Mason Thames) continues to be affected by his incarceration and battles with The Grabber, a character who uses phones (before the age of cell phones) as a source of his terror (his victims ringing in from beyond), and like Freddy invades the dreams of his new intended targets. At one point Finn passes a pay phone and answers it with a dismissive tone indicating ‘sorry, wrong number’, or words to that effect, as he quickly hangs up. But this time it is his 15-year-old sister, Gwen (Madeleine McGraw) who is being haunted in her dreams, first with a call from her mother who had committed suicide, and later by images of three abducted boys from under ice floes at a Colorado Christian camp called Alpine Lake. She is freaking out, but Finn tries in vain to convince her it is just her dream life. Soon there is enough evidence to suggest otherwise and brother and sister, and friend Ernesto (Miguel Mora) are off to Alpine Lake in the worst kind of winter storm you can imagine.

The setting of the camp, and the snowy weather add immeasurably to the ghostly nature of the story, and is given credence by Derrickson’s own childhood attending these kinds of winter camps in Colorado. Gwen continues to be even more intensely haunted by chilling images of these kids, and joining their quest to solve this mystery is the camp’s owner, Mando (a fine Demian Bichir), who puts more pieces of the puzzle that has haunted him for years with no resolution in finding these missing campers, presumed drowned.

Derrickson takes his own sweet time getting to the main event, that is the full bodied return of The Grabber, but in dragging out the set-up for his hell-bent confrontation, the filmmaker creates a pretty compelling psychological horror picture that is a step above most sequels of this type that just want to cash in on what we saw the first time. The Grabber this time is also a device to take us back into the dream world of these kids as they are now teenagers with all the angst and growing pains that implies. With his cinematographer Par M. Ekberg employing grainy super 8 film, the visuals of Black Phone 2 are especially impressive, using muted colors to suggest the real world of freezing temperatures and spooky atmosphere of the camp and its surroundings, and more vivid contrasts for the frequent dream sequences.

Returning, older and maybe a bit wiser to their roles as Finn and Gwen, Thames and McGraw are excellent, both taking their characters into three dimensions and giving them real gravitas unlike a lot of teen portrayals in more by-the-numbers horror sequels. Jeremy Davies also returns as their father, Terrence, at first skeptical as all parents are in these things but then finding his own emotional hook to give dad some real human emotion as the mystery deepens regarding his wife’s death. Hawke is a hoot with essentially a vocal performance as the heavily-masked Grabber, and I had to keep wondering just how much he was physically involved in the performance as it appears the stuntmen also got a workout on the ice. Nevertheless The Grabber is a fun nemesis, and this movie no doubt is set up for yet another sequel in a few years time, hopefully with Finn and Gwen as young adults still haunted. Blumhouse is on to something with this franchise.

Producers are Jason Blum, Derrickson, and Cargill.

Title: Black Phone 2
Distributor: Universal Pictures
Release date: October 17, 2025
Director: Scott Derrickson
Screenwriters: Scott Derrickson, C. Robert Cargill
Cast: Mason Thames, Madeleine McGraw, Jeremy Davies, Demian Bichir, Ethan Hawke, Miguel Mora, Arianna Rivas
Rating: R
Running time: 1 hour 54 minutes