This has been an exceptional year for the horror genre. In the aftermath of the excess and bloat that defined the early 2000s, horror came screaming back to life in the mid-2010s with a wave of high-concept, low-budget hits like It Follows, The Witch, Get Out, Raw, and Hereditary. Since then, the genre has remained fertile ground for imaginative filmmakers, though it’s largely operated within modest budgets. Powerhouses like Blumhouse and A24 continued to champion this model—producing and distributing cost-effective projects that frequently yielded both critical and commercial success.

But if 2025 is destined to be remembered for anything in cinematic history, it’s as the year that big-budget, ambitious horror returned with a vengeance. Films like Sinners, Weapons, and 28 Years Later saw visionary directors bringing bold, fully realized nightmares to life with significant financial backing—and ensuring audiences felt every cent of it on screen. Beyond those tentpoles, releases such as Heart Eyes, Drop, and Final Destination: Bloodlines have proven that large-scale, auteur-driven horror can thrive when given the room to breathe.

Now, another name joins that elite list of swing-for-the-fences horror films of 2025: The Black Phone 2. It stands as yet another thrilling reminder that horror—when paired with ambition and resources—can be just as cinematic, daring, and emotionally gripping as any blockbuster on the big screen.

TOP FIVE THINGS ABOUT “BLACK PHONE 2”

5. The “Aliens” Approach

Cards on the table — I loved Scott Derrickson’s 2021 film The Black Phone. Its intimate, small-scale, and self-contained nature felt like a refreshing departure from the filmmaker’s big-budget Marvel days (Doctor Strange, anyone?). More than that, it marked Derrickson’s most thematically cohesive and emotionally resonant work to date — a film that managed to be both terrifying and profoundly moving, surpassing the scares of his earlier horror efforts.

The Black Phone 2 takes all the craftsmanship and eerie atmosphere of the original and turns the dial up to eleven. This time around, Derrickson and co-writer C. Robert Cargill lean fully into the subjective experience, crafting a sequel that’s more emotionally charged and immersive than its predecessor. The writing digs deeper into the pain, trauma, and lingering darkness of the first film’s characters while expanding the world with striking scale and intensity. In short, this is the Aliens to the first film’s Alien—bigger, bolder, and bursting with purpose. And honestly? It absolutely rules.

4. The Performances

The Black Phone was packed with standout performances, and its sequel not only reunites those same actors but pushes each of them into bold, fascinating new territory. Ethan Hawke, who delivered an instantly iconic turn as The Grabber in the first film, returns in spectral form—his character now a malevolent presence haunting the edges of the story. Freed from the constraints of physical realism, Hawke dives headfirst into theatrical extremes, channeling something almost Kabuki-like in its intensity and precision. It’s a performance that’s equal parts grotesque, mesmerizing, and impossible to look away from.

Even more impressive, though, are the returning young leads Mason Thames and Madeleine McGraw. In the years since the first film, both have grown—not just in age, but in confidence and emotional range—and the sequel makes full use of that evolution. Where The Black Phone showcased them as exceptional child actors, The Black Phone 2 treats them as full-fledged dramatic leads. The result is remarkable: both Thames and McGraw deliver layered, mature performances that deepen their characters’ journeys with real gravitas. It’s a thrill to watch them rise to the occasion and carry the emotional core of a film that’s otherwise drenched in supernatural menace.

3. The Sound

One of the standout aspects of The Black Phone was its rich, tactile sound design — a sensory experience that wrapped the audience in tension. To my absolute delight, The Black Phone 2 doesn’t just preserve that quality; it amplifies it to stunning effect. The score, composed by Atticus Derrickson, fuses seamlessly with the broader sound design until the line between music and atmosphere practically disappears. The result is a soundscape that feels alive — an omnipresent force that heightens the stakes, mirrors the film’s larger scale, and seeps under your skin in all the right ways.

What’s equally impressive is how the film wields silence. For all its layered, bone-rattling audio, The Black Phone 2 knows exactly when to pull back, using moments of quiet to suffocate the audience in dread. These passages of near-silence — punctuated by barely perceptible low-frequency hums and ghostly echoes — put entire theaters on edge, creating a tension that’s as physical as it is emotional. It’s vintage Derrickson: precise, patient, and deeply unnerving, but here it’s turned up to eleven. The sound doesn’t just complement the film — it becomes its own character, whispering, rattling, and haunting every frame.

2. Scott Derrickson’s Direction

Scott Derrickson has always loved to sprinkle in his grainy, 8mm-style found-footage flair — anyone who’s seen Sinister or The Black Phone knows this well. In Black Phone 2, he gets the best of both worlds, blending that scuzzy, analog grit with sleek, cinematic precision. The film’s real-world sequences are fluidly staged and visually assured, while its dreamlike interludes let Derrickson go full freak mode, indulging in surreal, jittery horror imagery that feels both tactile and nightmarish. It’s a natural, confident evolution of the visual language established in the first film — and it’s absolutely exhilarating to watch.

The result is a striking showcase of Derrickson and cinematographer Pär M. Ekberg’s range. Together, they balance the beautifully cinematic with the disturbingly naturalistic, often within the same scene. Every frame glows with intention and scale, making it clear that this sequel isn’t just a creative expansion, but a financial one too. You can feel every dollar on the screen — not as excess, but as purpose. Black Phone 2 looks and feels massive, the rare horror sequel that leverages a bigger budget without losing its texture or teeth.

1. Slasher Sequel Heaven

Black Phone 2 feels like if you threw Aliens, A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors, and Friday the 13th Part VI: Jason Lives into a blender, then added a generous pour of The Shining and The Thing for extra bite. It’s that rare horror sequel that manages to feel both fully realized and delightfully pulpy — the kind of film that captures the spirit of the 1980s without ever slipping into parody. Everything from its pacing to its practical-feeling visuals radiates that grimy, old-school energy, to the point where you half expect to stumble upon it during a midnight cable slot and wonder why nobody’s talking about this wild slasher sequel where Ethan Hawke, with a zombie face, is skating around swinging an axe.

Simply put, Black Phone 2 is a miracle of modern horror filmmaking — bold, bloody, and beautifully unhinged. It’s a film that shouldn’t exist in 2025, and yet somehow, it does — a reminder that big-budget horror can still have soul, weirdness, and personality. For all its chaos and carnage, it left my horror-loving heart completely full.

RGM GRADE

(B+)

Check this out as big and as loud as humanly possible. Black Phone 2 is the sole big release, blockbuster horror film that we are getting this October, but goddamn if it doesn’t earn every square inch of that title. A perfect B-movie that more than earns its B.

Will Jones