The Black Phone 2 Review – Ethan Hawke Returns as the Demon Behind the Mask in a Chilling, Surprising Sequel

When Ethan Hawke’s eerie villain, the Grabber, rasps to his former prey, “Did you really think our story was over, Finny?”, it’s both a taunt to the character and a sly wink to the audience. After all, the masked killer clearly met his end in the original Black Phone. But as every horror fan knows, death is rarely final when there’s more story to tell—and when the first film earns over $160 million worldwide, there’s always another call waiting to be answered.

Luckily, The Black Phone 2 isn’t just a cynical cash-in. Four years after the 2021 breakout hit, Scott Derrickson returns to the director’s chair with a sequel that’s richer in atmosphere, more emotionally resonant, and surprisingly thoughtful beneath its supernatural shocks. Ethan Hawke’s villain, reborn in spectral form, anchors a story that blends trauma, religion, and revenge with striking visual flair.

The result? A sequel that honors the spirit of the first film while daring to dream—literally and figuratively—on a larger scale.

The Plot: The Past Won’t Stay Buried

When we reunite with Finn Shaw (Mason Thames), the quiet, traumatized teen who escaped the Grabber’s basement, he’s a shadow of the brave boy we once knew. Now older, angrier, and still haunted, Finn lashes out at classmates and numbs himself with weed and apathy. The ghostly phone that once saved his life may be gone, but the echoes of those dead children and their killer remain lodged in his psyche.

His younger sister Gwen (Madeleine McGraw), who inherited their late mother’s psychic abilities, begins to have vivid, terrifying dreams. In them, she channels her mother’s tormented spirit and glimpses the faces of several missing boys—early victims of the Grabber whose bodies were never found. Her visions point toward Alpine Lake, a remote Christian summer camp tucked deep in the Rockies.

When a snowstorm traps Finn and Gwen there, the line between nightmare and waking life collapses. The Grabber, it turns out, hasn’t stayed buried. Like a demonic echo from Hell itself, he manifests within dreams, reaching across the veil to exact vengeance on the boy who defeated him. Gwen becomes his new target, her psychic link making her the perfect conduit for his haunting return.

A Story of Faith, Fear, and Family

Screenwriters Scott Derrickson and C. Robert Cargill, adapting Joe Hill’s mythos once again, aren’t shy about embracing the pulpier elements of their story. They know full well that the logic is slippery—the dead killer communicating through dreams, the blending of grief and possession—but they commit so completely that disbelief feels irrelevant.

What grounds the movie is its emotional undercurrent. Beneath the supernatural horror lies a portrait of a fractured family still wrestling with guilt, faith, and loss. Finn and Gwen’s alcoholic father (Jeremy Davies, reprising his role) remains an unpredictable presence—by turns remorseful, ashamed, and frightening. Their home feels haunted even before the Grabber returns.

The film also threads in sharp commentary on religion through the setting at Alpine Lake. The camp’s well-meaning but repressive overseers (played with unnerving politeness by Graham Abbey and Maev Beaty) embody a brand of pious control that mirrors the Grabber’s twisted sense of morality. In a genre often content with jump scares, The Black Phone 2 takes surprising interest in how faith can both save and destroy.

Ethan Hawke’s Unholy Encore

Every horror saga lives or dies by its monster, and The Black Phone franchise has found an all-timer in Ethan Hawke’s Grabber.
In the original, his masked menace was physical and grotesque—a human predator hiding behind theatrical sadism. Here, freed from mortal limits, he’s more spectral and psychological. The masks remain (each slightly altered and more demonic), but now his presence infects dreams, distorting reality like a virus of fear.

Hawke’s performance is astonishingly precise. He modulates between whisper and roar, menace and mockery, his gravelly voice doing half the acting. The camera rarely lingers on his full face, yet his energy dominates every frame. He’s as magnetic as Freddy Krueger and as pitiless as the devil himself, proof that sometimes the scariest monsters are the ones who refuse to stay dead.

New Faces, Familiar Souls

Returning leads Mason Thames and Madeleine McGraw continue to impress far beyond their years. Thames portrays Finn as a young man walking the line between survivor and victim—still resourceful but weighed down by guilt. McGraw, meanwhile, emerges as the film’s emotional core, her Gwen both fearless and heart-wrenchingly vulnerable.

The supporting cast adds welcome texture. Demián Bichir lends quiet gravitas as the camp’s empathetic owner, while Arianna Rivas brings spark and humor as his niece, whose growing friendship (and subtle romance) with Gwen adds warmth amid the snowbound horror. In a clever twist of casting, Miguel Mora, who played one of the Grabber’s victims in the first film, returns as that boy’s brother—a meta choice that deepens the film’s theme of cyclical trauma.

Style and Atmosphere: Dream Logic Done Right

Derrickson, whose horror credentials include Sinister and The Exorcism of Emily Rose, directs with the confidence of a filmmaker who knows exactly where to turn the screw.
He shoots nightmare sequences on Super 8 and Super 16 film, creating a flickering, grainy texture that makes dreamscapes feel uneasily real. Shadows stretch unnaturally, light burns too bright, and the masks seem to shimmer with a life of their own.

The result is a hypnotic blend of old-school and modern horror, evoking 1980s classics like A Nightmare on Elm Street and Phantasm without merely imitating them. Even when Derrickson’s references are overt, they feel affectionate rather than derivative.

The sound design and score, composed by Derrickson’s son Atticus Derrickson, are integral to the experience—unsettling hums, distorted whispers, and orchestral swells that never quite resolve. It’s music that creeps rather than crashes, amplifying the film’s atmosphere of dread.

Themes Beneath the Terror

What sets The Black Phone 2 apart from typical horror sequels is its willingness to confront trauma head-on. The first film ended with survival; the sequel asks what comes after survival—what happens when the nightmare ends, but the mind won’t let go.

Finn’s violence and apathy are the symptoms of a soul still in shock. Gwen’s visions, meanwhile, embody inherited pain—the psychological legacy of a broken family. The Grabber, reborn as something otherworldly, becomes not just a monster but a metaphor for the past itself: the evil that refuses to stay buried, the memory that keeps calling even when you refuse to answer.

By tying its supernatural horror to emotional truth, The Black Phone 2 gives its scares genuine weight. It’s not merely about a killer’s revenge; it’s about how people rebuild themselves after unimaginable fear.

Flaws and Frights

The film isn’t without its rough edges. At nearly two hours, the pacing drags in the middle, particularly during the camp’s early scenes. The rules of the Grabber’s resurrection are deliberately vague—he exists in dreams, but can still physically harm his victims, and the mechanics aren’t always clear. Yet Derrickson’s conviction carries the film through its logic gaps. When the set pieces land—and several do with ferocious energy—they more than justify the buildup.

Occasionally, the film leans too heavily on its influences; horror aficionados will easily spot nods to Elm Street, The Shining, and even The Sixth Sense. But it’s hard to begrudge Derrickson for wearing his inspirations proudly when he transforms them into something so visually and emotionally distinct.

The Black Phone 2 is that rare horror sequel that dares to expand rather than repeat. It deepens the mythology, strengthens the emotional stakes, and delivers some of the most atmospheric filmmaking of Derrickson’s career.

Ethan Hawke’s Grabber remains a nightmare for the ages—grotesque, tragic, and unforgettable. Thames and McGraw, meanwhile, evolve their characters with subtlety and heart, turning what could have been a formulaic follow-up into a story about survival, faith, and the power of confronting your demons—both literal and psychological.

Stylishly shot, superbly acted, and emotionally resonant, The Black Phone 2 may not reinvent horror, but it refines it with craftsmanship and conviction. And as Hawke’s masked specter might say with a smirk: the line is still open.