At the end of Wes Craven’s legendary 1996 horror film Scream, after Stu Macher and Billy Loomis are revealed to be the killers, Stu tells Sidney Prescott, “Everybody dies, but us, we get to carry on and plan the sequel! Cause let’s face it baby, these days, you gotta have a sequel!” So many horror movie filmmakers feel like sequels are necessary, but just because you can make a sequel doesn’t mean you should. Sometimes sequels are great. Sometimes it’s better to just stick with one good film. In the case of the exceptional film The Black Phone (2022), a horrifying story about a serial child killer, the follow-up, Black Phone 2, is not just a terrific sequel, it expands on the characters from the first film and provides a compelling and equally frightening backstory. Universal Pictures Home Entertainment has released 4K UHD and Blu-ray Collector’s Editions of Black Phone 2, which include some intriguing bonus features, including two behind-the-scenes mini documentaries about the shooting locations, production, and ghastly makeup effects, as well as insightful interviews with the cast and crew.
L-R: Mason Thames as Finney and Ethan Hawke as the Grabber in BLACK PHONE 2, directed by Scott Derrickson. Photo Credit: Sabrina Lantos/Universal Pictures. © 2025 Universal Studios. All Rights Reserved.
The Black Phone and Black Phone 2 are based on the short story by Joe Hill and written by C. Robert Cargill and Scott Derrickson (Sinister; The Gorge) and directed by Derrickson. The terrifying child killer introduced in The Black Phone, The Grabber, played by Ethan Hawke, was the first time audiences had seen Hawke (Sinister) portray a character like that and he was so good at embodying the evil within the seemingly soulless killer. After being killed in the first film, The Grabber is back from the dead four years later in Black Phone 2 to once again terrorize brother and sister Finney (Mason Thames) and Gwen (Madeleine McGraw) who learn that he had been killing children longer than they realized. For Black Phone 2, Finney and Gwen travel to a Christian camp surrounded by a snow-covered mountain landscape evocative of The Shining, which provides the perfect backdrop for their final showdown with The Grabber.
In The Black Phone, we learn that Gwen inherited from her mother (Anna Lore) the ability to see things in psychic dreams, which allows her to locate Finney when he is kidnapped by The Grabber. Tragically, her mother’s psychic abilities led her to take her own life. In Black Phone 2, Gwen dreams about receiving a strange phone call from her mother from Alpine Lake Camp, where her mother was a counselor in 1957, twenty years before Finney and Gwen encounter The Grabber. After her dreams about the phone call from her mother from the location, Gwen convinces Finney and their friend Ernesto (Miguel Mora) to travel to Alpine Lake Camp because she believes children who went missing there in 1957 might have been victims of The Grabber. A blizzard traps them there with the camp supervisor Mando (Demián Bichir), his niece Mustang (Arianna Rivas), and camp employees Kenneth (Graham Abbey) and Barbara (Maev Beaty). In The Black Phone, the title refers to a black telephone in the basement of The Grabber’s house from which Finney receives phone calls from his victims. For Black Phone 2, a pay phone at Alpine Lake Camp allows the Grabber to call Finney from beyond the grave. Based on information from Gwen’s dreams and The Grabber’s increasingly threating phone calls to Finney on the pay phone, they search for the bodies of the missing kids from 1957, and the siblings are faced with a shocking revelation about their family.
L-R: Madeleine McGraw as Gwen and Ethan Hawke as the Grabber in BLACK PHONE 2, directed by Scott Derrickson. Photo Credit: Sabrina Lantos/Universal Pictures. © 2025 Universal Studios. All Rights Reserved.
A couple of things that make Derrickson’s creepy film Sinister (2012) so effective, the score and use of Super 8 film sequences, powerfully enhance the terror of Black Phone 2. Director Scott Derrickson’s son Atticus Derrickson is the composer for Black Phone 2, and his excellent, dread-inducing score has a similar sound to the score for Sinister, which helps set the tone of the film. Black Phone 2 cinematographer Pär M. Ekberg (Polar; Stockholm Bloodbath) utilized a blend of digital and Super 8 film, with Super 8 being used to give Gwen’s dream sequences a grainy, distorted look, like in The Black Phone.
Thames and McGraw have fantastic chemistry as brother and sister in both films and do an outstanding job of believably portraying the siblings’ emotional maturity and unbreakable bond in Black Phone 2. It’s been exciting to watch Hawke skillfully personify the immense cruelty of The Grabber and he’s even more menacing in Black Phone 2, especially with the gruesome makeup effects. The masks The Grabber wears in The Black Phone were designed by illustrious makeup master Tom Savini (The Night of the Living Dead) and Jason Baker (Terrifier 3). The frost-covered masks worn by Hawke in Black Phone 2 were designed and sculpted by Francois Dagenais of MindWarp FX and, when Finney tries to rip off the Grabber’s mask in one scene, he only rips off the lower half, revealing a skinless, bloody jaw and teeth, like the mask was frozen to his face, thanks to some amazingly gruesome makeup.
L-R: Miguel Mora as Ernesto, Arianna Rivas as Mustang, and Madeleine McGraw as Gwen in BLACK PHONE 2, directed by Scott Derrickson. Photo Credit: Sabrina Lantos/Universal Pictures. © 2025 Universal Studios. All Rights Reserved.
Black Phone 2 is well-written and features meaningful storytelling, sensational performances, (especially from Hawke, who is genuinely chilling), and magnificent makeup effects. This is a perfect example of a masterful sequel.
Black Phone 2 Collector’s Edition Blu-ray Special Features*:
- Seven (7) Deleted Scenes
- Dialed In: The Cast of Black Phone 2
- A Story Carved In Ice
- Frozen In Time
- Feature Commentary with Director/Co-Writer/Producer Scott Derrickson
*Digital buyer receives limited license to access content. See retailer’s terms for details.
Available on digital November 4th, 2025.
Available on 4K UHD, Blu-ray, and DVD December 23rd, 2025.
For more information, head to the official Universal Pictures Home Entertainment Black Phone 2 webpage.
Final Score: 4 out of 5.
Share this:
Categories: Home Release, Home Video, Recommendation, Reviews, streaming
Leave a Reply