In 1954, director Alfred Hitchcock released Dial M for Murder and Rear Window. Ingmar Bergman had Wild Strawberries and The Seventh Seal in 1957. 1974 saw Mel Brooks and Francis Ford Coppola simultaneously reach their apexes, the former with Blazing Saddles and Young Frankenstein, and the latter with The Conversation and The Godfather Part II. And then, in 1993, Steven Spielberg seemingly did the impossible, conquering the box office and the Academy Awards with Jurassic Park and Schindler’s List. He then repeated the feat in 2002 with Minority Report and Catch Me If You Can… and again in 2005 with War of the Worlds and Munich… and again in 2011 with The Adventures of Tintin and War Horse. Now, in 2025, Scott Derrickson has sneakily achieved greatness with Apple TV’s The Gorge back in February, and Black Phone 2 this October.

Of course, to compare a made-for-streaming creature feature and a horror sequel to some of the greatest films of all time is quite a hyperbole. To equate anything to The Godfather Part II would be enough to have my license as a cinephile revoked on the grounds of heresy. But the general sentiment is still true, with Derrickson exponentially raising the ceiling for two films that should have been lost to the swamp of nothingness. The Gorge was a dream come true for anyone who has longed for Call of Duty Zombies to come to the silver screen, with the PG-13 rating never barring Derrickson from getting down and dirty with some nightmarish creatures. Black Phone 2 drops the "the” from its predecessor’s title, yet never drops the terror or suspense.

Shifting a few years later to 1982, Finney (Mason Thames) is still haunted by The Grabber (Ethan Hawke) despite killing him at the end of the previous film. But that only marked a victorious battle in a war that mixes reality with dreams (or nightmares). His sister, Gwen (Madeleine McGraw, delivering one of the best performances of the year), has a series of dreams about children being gruesomely butchered at a Christian winter camp in the Colorado mountains, their corpses etching letters in the ice before sinking to the bottom. Similar to how she solved the mystery of The Grabber while Finney was locked in his dungeon, these dreams are visions of what’s happened, the murdered kids being a key to The Grabber’s past, and how he’s still able to be a threat to the living.

With a runtime of 114 minutes, this film is not brisk. But Derrickson knows how to maintain a creepy atmosphere through pacing, an interesting story, and some stellar performances. All of these things are hard to come by in horror movies as gruesome as this one, and it's rarer to have them combine so harmoniously. I knew I was seeing something that was a cut above when we were forty minutes into the film, and I wasn’t bothered that Ethan Hawke still hadn’t shown up yet. But good things come to those who wait, and Hawke’s turn as this movie’s Freddie Krueger is quite memorable, reaching down into hell and relishing in his demonic presence.

A Nightmare on Elm Street is the central influence, mostly out of necessity, since there’s not much of a grounded reason for this sequel to exist. Gwen is cut, beaten, and tossed around by a seemingly invisible enemy, her dreams being the only time she can see The Grabber. But he can still harm those who can’t see him, as he does on a frozen lake with some makeshift ice skates and an axe. It’s a lot less goofy to watch than it is to type and read aloud, although it’s not all perfect. There’s still plenty of blood to be chillingly spilled, most of which is conveyed through Derrickson’s signature Super 8 footage mixed with eerily scratchy sounds.

This franchise only has a few more time jumps left before its titular payphones go completely out of style. Even here, almost all of them are out of order and targets of ridicule for their unreliability. I can already tell you that my Old Spice whistle ringtone won’t conjure up the same level of scares as the clangs of a rotary phone. It’s a good thing I haven’t taken my phone off silent mode in almost a decade, as there might be a few calls from beyond the grave that I should probably miss.