The Black Phone 2 - Movie Review
THE BLACK PHONE 2 (2025)
Review By Carson Kelly
Some stories return not with noise, but with a pulse, a quiet throb beneath the floorboards that tells you something is still alive down there, still moving, still waiting to be found.
The Black Phone 2 is one of those stories.
This sequel arrives years after the original, carrying the strange tension of expectation: could the world of The Black Phone sustain its mystique without diluting it? Could its ghosts speak twice and still carry the same power?
Surprisingly and refreshingly, the answer is yes.
The film steps forward with quiet assurance. It doesn’t repeat the first movie’s rhythms; it expands them. What emerges is a broader, darker landscape, one wired with new characters, new hauntings, and a mythology that reaches back farther than the audience expects. The tonal DNA remains unmistakable, yet the sequel refuses to stand in the shadow of its predecessor.
Its most striking achievement lies in the delicate construction of its lore. Instead of overexplaining or overindulging, the narrative invites the viewer to lean in to listen closely as it reveals fragments from earlier years of this world’s murky past. These glimpses backward give the film its backbone. They lend texture, history, and purpose. This is not horror built on jump scares; it’s horror built on memory, trauma, and the unsettling idea that time itself can haunt the living.
And at the center of it all stands Madeleine McGraw.
Her performance arrives like a quiet revelation. There’s something transformative in what she delivers a shift so complete that, at first glance, she’s nearly unrecognizable. That ability to reshape herself allows the film to anchor its more ambitious ideas in genuine emotional truth. McGraw doesn’t simply reprise a role; she evolves it. Every scene she inhabits feels sharpened, heavier, threaded with a kind of resilience that deepens the story’s emotional undercurrent.
The film benefits from this growth in ways that ripple outward. With its expanded cast and expanded mythology, The Black Phone 2 gains something the first film didn’t have: a horizon. You can feel the world stretching, testing its limits, suggesting possibilities for future entries without ever feeling like an advertisement for them. That’s a rare balance for a modern franchise thriller and a promising one.
There is a sense of patience in the storytelling, a confidence that allows the film to breathe. Rather than rushing to satisfy expectations, it unfolds steadily, trusting its atmosphere, trusting its performers, trusting the lingering power of the unseen. This is a sequel that understands the weight of silence almost as well as it understands the weight of fear.
By the time the credits roll, what remains is that hum the hum of potential, of something not yet finished, of a story whose line is still being drawn. It doesn’t close the door. It opens a corridor.
For fans of the original film, this sequel is absolutely worth embracing. For longtime horror enthusiasts, it offers a mixture of mood, mythology, and character work that feels both familiar and freshly sharpened. It is well worth the wait, and even more worth the watch.
If this is the direction the franchise intends to wander in, the path ahead looks eerily bright.
Letterbox Review Link: https://boxd.it/bKLYjN
