Videos by ComicBook.com
Following its $132 million box office run in October, which made it one of the highest-grossing horror films of the year, Black Phone 2 crashed into Peacock’s streaming library on January 16th. The movie, director Scott Derrickson’s sequel to his hit 2021 supernatural horror movie The Black Phone, immediately launched into the Top 10 and has held the No. 1 spot ever since, outranking other favorites like Shrek Forever After, Despicable Me, and The Hunger Games. Ethan Hawke, Mason Thames, and Madeleine McGraw reprise their roles from the first film in a sequel set four years after the original as a now 17-year-old Finney and his sister Gwen deal with their lingering trauma and the Grabber’s vengeful return at a winter camp.
Black Phone 2 Is a Surprisingly Strong Horror Sequel
Horror sequels often have a reputation for being bad, many failing to match the original’s impact and providing diluted stories, cheap scares, and overused tropes, but Black Phone 2 beat the odds to became not just a successful follow-up, but one of the best horror movies of the year. Instead of being a simple cash grab repeat, the movie successfully evolves the original’s story and supernatural lore as it delves deeper into the characters’ trauma, and it delivers plenty of chills with a more ’80s horror-inspired vibe and more intense horror and gore.
