Black Phone 2 review – hit horror sequel lumbers toward Elm Street

<p>Ethan Hawke’s child-killing murderer returns from the dead to become a joke-free, low-rent Freddy Krueger in a follow-up that leaves us cold</p><p>Arriving as the re-activated Stephen King machine was still churning out adaptations, quality be damned, The Black Phone felt like a lazy fanboy tribute. With its 1970s small-town setting, high school cast, psychic kids and gnarly neighbourhood villain, it was close to pastiche and, like the very worst of King’s stories, it was also inelegantly overstuffed.</p><p>Funnily enough the call came from inside the family home, as it was based on a short story from King’s son Joe Hill, over-extended into a film that was a surprise $161m hit. It was the story of the Grabber, a sadistic killer of young boys who would revel in elongating the ritual of their deaths. While sexual abuse was never mentioned, there was something inescapably queer-coded about the character and the historical touchpoints/moral panics he was clearly supposed to refer to, reinforced by Ethan Hawke playing him with a certain swishy, effeminate flare (even before his appearance, the word fag had also been liberally used). But the film was too opaque to ever really admit that and even without that uneasiness, it was too busily plotted and too high on its exhaustingly grubby nastiness to work as anything more than an undiscerning sleepover nightmare fuel.</p> <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/film/2025/oct/16/black-phone-2-review-horror-sequel-ethan-hawke">Continue reading...</a>