Overview: Four years ago, 13-year-old Finn killed his abductor and escaped, becoming the sole survivor of The Grabber. But true evil transcends death ... and the phone is ringing again.

Four-time Academy Award® nominee Ethan Hawke returns to the most sinister role of his career as The Grabber seeks vengeance on Finn (Mason Thames) from beyond the grave by menacing Finn’s younger sister, Gwen (Madeleine McGraw).

As Finn, now 17, struggles with life after his captivity, the headstrong 15-year-old Gwen 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.

Determined to solve the mystery and end the torment for both her and her brother, Gwen persuades Finn to visit the camp during a winter storm. There, she uncovers a shattering intersection between The Grabber and her own family’s history.

Together, she and Finn must confront a killer who has grown more powerful in death and more significant to them than either could imagine.

Verdict: Over three years since the release of The Black Phone film adaptation, a sequel has finally made its way into theaters this month. Huge off-screen narrative developments have occurred in the few years between the 2021 film and its feature film follow-up, briefly in the spin-off segment of Shudder’s V/H/S/85, titled “Dreamkill”, but more so in this current entry.

On the one hand, Black Phone 2 features uneasy adult figures with particularly rough backgrounds, including the serial kidnapper/ killer known as “The Grabber” (Ethan Hawke). This antagonist has recently stirred controversy within the public sphere for preying on young boys, albeit not in the same manner as Freddy Krueger’s egregiously exaggerated conception.

On the other hand, the younger characters have matured, now living life as teenagers in high school. The Blake siblings—Finney “Finn” (Mason Thames) and Gwendolyn “Gwen” (Madeleine McGraw)—are getting along with their father, Terrence (Jeremy Davies). Yet, they still suffer from certain lingering traumas of their shared past.

Black Phone 2 allows viewers to ride shotgun in the franchise’s second chapter, especially as an improvement of its predecessor. To an extent, it impresses as a young adult novel story akin to Harry Potter or Percy Jackson. Narratively and thematically, this works brilliantly and has much to say about the world that it establishes.