Movie Review: Black Phone 2

By Harshan Heer
Copy Editor | The Pacific Times

If someone calls your phone with no caller ID, would you pick it up? Finney Blake did, and it saved his life. I watched “Black Phone 2” in theatres last week and it left me terrified but wanting more. I recommend everyone get the full horrific experience by watching it in theatres late at night.  

Editor’s note: This movie review contains possible spoilers.

“Black Phone 2” is a sequel to “Black Phone.” It is set a few years into the future, following Finney Blake and his younger sister reuniting after Finney escaped The Grabber’s basement. In “Black Phone,” Finney was kidnapped by The Grabber. He used a black landline connected to The Grabber’s basement to communicate with past dead victims. Finney’s sister, Gwen Blake, receives visions that help her locate Finney. 

In “Black Phone 2,” Gwen received visions about her dead mother working at a Christian camp, and potential victims in the woods, so Finney and his sister spent their winter break there to find out more information about her past. With another black landline in the woods, the siblings were tasked with uncovering the truth about the forest victims and taking down The Grabber once again. 

“Black Phone” uses psychological horror to instill fear in the audience. The plot is unique to me—having to live with the trauma of being kidnapped for the rest of your life, constantly revisiting and confronting it, then being forced to re-live it all over again was sad to watch as an audience member. Taking down the grabber was a lot harder in this movie since he was invisible, a supernatural entity that was stripped of humanity. The plot reminds me of the movie “Terrifier” (2022); I noticed parallels between the protagonists from “Black Phone 2” and “Terrifier” in their efforts to take down a human serial killer. In their sequels, they take the antagonists down once again, but this time as supernatural, seemingly unkillable beings.

I preferred the setting in “Black Phone” more than the sequel because Finney’s isolation, not having anyone there to physically help him, only advising him, made this franchise unique. It makes the audience feel Finney’s fear for what could happen to him. The nature of the black landline changed in the second movie, as it was used to bring the siblings closer to the truth of the camp and their mother’s history. Some could argue that this was a great expansion of the black landline, but I personally liked the simpler concept from the first film, when it was just past victims and Finney. The landline became a general spiritual connection between the living and the dead. I felt that taking that unique characteristic away from him and allowing other characters, like his sister, to hear the landline ring too diluted the story a bit.

I felt a unique fear in both movies because of different vulnerabilities Finney and Gwen faced. Finney was physically weak in the first movie and Gwen was spiritually powerful. In the second movie, the roles were reversed, which I found interesting and engaging. In the first movie, Finney had just as little information as we had. In the second movie, he was older and wiser with experience, an aspect that caused it to lose some of the anxiety built up from the mysterious basement.

I asked Ishan Pathak, who has seen both movies, what his thoughts were about the film. He said, “Black Phone 2’ was cool but I liked the first one more; the focus was too much on other characters and not on Finney. The first one was scarier and the narrative was better. I thought the winter camp concept was cool, but it would’ve been sick if they isolated Gwen and put her in a similar situation as they did to Finney in the first movie.”

Horror is my favorite genre. I enjoy anything that can make me curl up in a ball, with my teeth biting my nails, anxiously watching as I get more terrified than the main characters. “Black Phone 2” did exactly that. I would rate it an 8/10, it was great, but nothing could top the first film. I highly recommend watching both films if you enjoy mild horror that focuses more on situational distress than gore and violence for scares. There are rumors of a potential “Black Phone 3;” given my love for the franchise, you can expect to find me in theatres the day it’s released.