The original ‘The Black Phone’ stood out as a genuinely unsettling horror film – atmospheric, claustrophobic, and psychologically rich. Its sequel, ‘Black Phone 2’, is still engaging but feels a little more conventional, expanding the story’s scope in ways that sometimes dilute its power.

Ethan Hawke’s terrifying character, the Grabber, was definitively killed in the first film, but here he returns as an angry ghost, haunting both memory and dream. It’s an intriguing conceit — one that pairs unexpectedly well with ‘The Ballad of a Small Player’, where Colin Farrell’s gambler seems to be settling his debts from beyond the grave. In ‘Black Phone 2’, the afterlife again becomes a battleground for guilt, revenge, and redemption.

Three years have passed since the events of the first film. Finn (Mason Thames) and his psychic sister Gwen (Madeleine McGraw) are still traumatized by what happened, but their attempts to move on are shattered when Gwen begins to experience vivid, recurring nightmares – dreams in which the Grabber stalks her. The line between dream and reality begins to blur, as payphones in the waking world start to ring again.

This time, the action moves beyond the basement setting that made the original so taut. Much of the sequel takes place in a snowbound, lakeside hostel – a haunting, half-derelict site where Gwen and Finn’s mother once worked as a counsellor. As the siblings uncover more about their mother’s past, they begin to realize that their family history may be the key to breaking the Grabber’s hold once and for all.

There are clear echoes of ‘A Nightmare on Elm Street’ here, particularly in the way the Grabber manipulates dreams from beyond the grave. Hawke’s presence is more spectral this time – his face never seen, only his distorted voice breaking through the static. It’s a clever device that keeps the threat alive while allowing the film to explore more abstract territory.

Visually, ‘Black Phone 2’ is striking, mixing gritty 8mm textures with dreamlike distortions to signal Gwen’s visions. But while these stylistic flourishes add atmosphere, they also make the film feel slightly overdetermined – the first film’s simplicity gave it focus, whereas this one sometimes feels scattered.

Still, beneath the supernatural trappings lies something powerful: a story about inherited trauma and the long shadow of violence, about how a single act of evil can ripple through generations. By tying ghosts and family history together, ‘Black Phone 2’ becomes less about horror in the conventional sense and more about the haunting weight of memory itself.