One of 2025’s best thriller movies is finally available to watch this week

A follow-up to a hit 2021 supernatural thriller, we believe the sequel is even better.

The first Black Phone was co-written and directed by Scott Derrickson (who also made Sinister, the scariest film ever, according to science) and was based on a short story by acclaimed author Joe Hill (Horns).

Premiering in 2021, the supernatural thriller followed Finney (Mason Thames, How to Train Your Dragon) - a 13-year-old living in the suburbs of North Denver, Colorado, in the '70s - who was abducted and held prisoner by a serial killer known as The Grabber (Oscar-nominee Ethan Hawke, Training Day).

Somehow, Finney found himself able to communicate with the ghosts of The Grabber's past victims via a mysterious disconnected black phone hanging on the basement wall where he was trapped. With the help of these spirits, the young teen plotted an escape.

The story for Black Phone 2 - also co-written and directed by Derrickson - sticks with Finney, now aged 17. This is as The Grabber seeks vengeance on him from beyond the grave.

The undead killer's method of doing this: menacing Finney’s younger sister, Gwen (an incredible Madeleine McGraw, returning from the original as well, and given a more significant role).

In her dreams, Gwen is plagued by disturbing visions of three boys being stalked at a Christian winter camp in the Rocky Mountains known as Alpine Lake.

Determined to solve the mystery and end the torment for both her and her brother, Gwen convinces Finney that they should both volunteer at the camp.

As the pair arrive at Alpine Lake, they become stranded due to a snowy blizzard. There, it isn't long before the siblings must confront The Grabber, who has only grown more powerful in death.

Black Phone 2 Review

JOE is a big fan of the original Black Phone, having recommended it many times. So, we're very pleased to report that the sequel is not only great but improves upon what came before.

There are many reasons for this. While the original was a ticking clock thriller that happened to have supernatural elements, Black Phone 2 ratchets up the intensity to full-on horror levels.

The Grabber is now a vengeful spirit à la Freddy Krueger, targeting victims from within their nightmares. As such, a lot of the story takes place within these dreams, giving Derrickson a chance to conjure up more of the surreal, expressionistic and terrifying imagery that he made his name on, with the likes of Sinister, The Gorge and Deliver Us From Evil.

That said, the snowy Rocky Mountain setting gives Black Phone 2 an incredibly tactile quality as well, with the director milking the gorgeous and cinematic but harsh and desolate setting for all its worth dramatically.

Finney and Gwen's investigation into what happened to the missing three boys also gives the sequel a welcome mystery element, the answers to which end up tying satisfyingly into the original 2021 movie, deepening it in the process.

Plus, while Black Phone 2 works very effectively as just a scary and stylish horror thriller, it contains deeper themes about healing and recovering from trauma.

Black Phone 2 Interviews

JOE spoke to director Scott Derrickson twice about Black Phone 2, once when the first trailer for the sequel hit the web and once again on the week of its release.

We also caught up with its two main stars, Madeleine McGraw and Mason Thames, on the eve of the horror thriller landing in cinemas.

Derrickson has helped create and been a part of so many great franchises, including the Marvel Cinematic Universe with Doctor Strange. That said, Black Phone 2 is notable for the filmmaker as it's the first sequel he has helmed to a movie he directed.

Speaking to JOE, Derrickson explained that there were several reasons why he was eager to make the follow-up. These include continuing the story of Finney and Gwen, Derrickson's desire to make a high school horror, and the plot allowing the filmmaker to draw on his own past experiences.

When asked if it was rewarding to stay with the character of Finney and explore how the events of the first film have shaped him, Derrickson responded: "Yeah, it was for Finney and Gwen both and their relationship."

Speaking about discovering McGraw and Thames on the first Black Phone, he told JOE: "I thought that they both were incredible actors and really delivered wonderful performances. Part of the reason that I agreed to do the [sequel] was that I wanted to do another film first [Apple TV's sci-fi hit The Gorge] and let the kids get a little bit older.

"They're in high school. Mason [Thames], when we shot this, was 17, and Madeline McGraw was 15. I loved the idea of making a high school coming-of-age horror film in the same way that the first movie was a middle school coming-of-age horror film."

On McGraw and Thames reprising their roles, he told JOE: "I'm so fortunate to have found those kids the way I did, and it was a bit of a leap of faith to write this... because child actors sometimes don't get better as they get older, they get more self-conscious. I think we've all seen that in TV series and things like that.

"But I just had confidence that knowing who they were as people, they're such big emotional engines, the two of them. I just felt pretty sure that they would be able to rise to the occasion of the extreme emotional demands of some of the scenes that they had to play, and boy, did they.

"I was very, very happy about that. I didn't have to push them too hard; they're very good at what they do."

Derrickson also explained:

"The sequel, because it's a high school movie, has more graphic violence, more blood and more intensity and more darkness than the first movie. That just seemed more befitting because the kids are a little older.

"A high school horror movie is a different genre altogether than a middle school horror film."

Derrickson has openly discussed in the past how his own childhood inspired the original Black Phone. He also confirmed to JOE that he again drew on his past for the sequel.

The director said: "I think the biggest inspiration from my own life and experience for Black Phone 2 comes from really the setting and the environment.

"I grew up in North Denver, and I would frequently, during the winters, go to these winter camps in the Rocky Mountains. These Christian winter camps had a big impact on me, not just because of what went on at camp, but also the environment.

"The snowbound Rockies are a really formidable place when you're surrounded by the mountains and you've got several feet of snow on the ground and the weather drops well below zero degrees Fahrenheit every night.

"I loved that time that I spent as a teenager in the Rocky Mountains at those camps, and I wanted to re-create that environment and the feel of that kind of place for this movie. So, in that respect, it's really drawing heavily on my own high school experiences."

Derrickson also said that he believes that this setting is perfect for a horror movie, stating: "My favourite director is Akira Kurosawa and one of the things that I really learned from him as a director is to use weather as a character if possible.

"He did it all the time - wind and snow and rain and heat.

"I love the idea of being able to make a Rocky Mountain blizzardy, snowy, windy, cold horror film with these characters that I was so fond of. That's a big part of what the movie is, and it was a big part of my motivation for making it."

Black Phone 2 was filmed in snowy Toronto, Canada, with Derrickson admitting that it was "not an easy shoot". That said, aided by his Swedish cinematographer Pär M. Ekberg (who the director notes was very "comfortable" with the cold), Derrickson believes any struggle was worth it for the end product.

"I found it very enlightening," the filmmaker told JOE. "Shooting at night in below-zero weather is hard. It's hard for everybody. But there's also something very invigorating about it because you're capturing something so tactile.

"I think that the coldness translates and seeing people's real breath and the performances reflect what they're physically feeling, I just think that there's no replacement for the real thing."

Adding to the tactile quality of Black Phone 2 was Derrickson's reluctance to include anything in the sequel that was fully CGI-generated.

As he explained: "You can usually tell when you're looking at fake snow.

"We did have a fair amount of snow within certain sequences that was done by our excellent special effects department, but a lot of it, even the snow that's falling, was real. Certainly, the snow on the ground is almost all real, and I wanted that feeling of reality.

"I do think you can feel the difference, and even the lake at the end, that was shot on a stage. But it was still a big stage, and with the floor, we used VFX to make it look more like ice.

"But it was real surrounding sets around that whole stage, and the mountains in the background are photographs, and we went to Colorado and tiled a real lake in the surrounding mountains.

"So when you're looking at that location, even though it's a CGI construction, almost everything you're looking at was photographed, so there's almost nothing in there that is pure CGI-generated, even for an extreme sequence like that."

McGraw and Thames echoed this when speaking to JOE.

On his first big scene acting opposite Ethan Hawke as The Grabber in the follow-up, Thames told JOE: "We had a scene… where I'm talking to him on the phone, and that was one of the most fun scenes I got to film in this movie, just being back with him, and it felt crazy because the snow was going.

"It was insane. It was basically a blizzard that day, and so what you see in those shots, it's rarely VFX.

"We're freezing in there. The stakes are high. We're angry, and it's amazing. I think in the final product, it really shows."

McGraw said something similar when discussing a stand-out sequence in the horror thriller, where her character, Gwen, is wildly flung around a room by The Grabber, who she can see, but no one else can.

"There's actually, honestly, rarely any CGI when it came to that," she said.

"I was actually working with a stunt Grabber, Jeff. He was Ethan's amazing, incredible stunt double. I worked with him a lot on those scenes, especially when they actually had me on wires and stuff. He would help hold me up because they didn't want nothing dangerous going on.

"It was a very, very cool experience for sure... I did at the same time work with a guy in a green suit as well. That is the part where the CGI came in, when they made [The Grabber] invisible.

"So it was very cool getting to see how that all turned out."

Mason Thames and Ethan Hawke in Black Phone 2

In terms of the themes of trauma and healing within Black Phone 2, Derrickson said these came to him and his co-writer, C. Robert Cargill, naturally as they were writing the movie.

"I never start up with a theme in my mind or something that I want to say or express. I find that to be very creatively limiting, and you end up making something that feels like it was driven by something somebody had to say," he explained.

"So, it was much more starting with those characters, and I was excited to pick up with Finn and Gwen years later in high school and see who they were at that stage in their life, given what they had gone through.

"It only made sense to me that they would have these wounds from that experience and that they would need healing and need to overcome some of what happened in the past, and that's how it evolved."

The general critical consensus about Black Phone 2 is that it not only improves on the original but is one of the best horror thrillers of the year.

Asked if this response is gratifying, especially after the difficult snowy shoot, Derrickson replied: "Of course, it's very gratifying. The only reason I think anybody should make a sequel of any kind is if their aim is to make a movie that's better than the original.

"When I hear that I hit that target in people's minds, it's wonderful."

Black Phone 2 is out in cinemas on Friday, 17 October 2025.