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What is the plot?
A woman named Hope Adler stands at a frost-rimed payphone in the Colorado Rockies in 1957. She squints at numbers scratched into the ice and speaks into the receiver, but the only response comes as a wash of static. Disturbed, Hope hangs up and walks away from the booth into the cold.
In Denver, in 1982, Finney Blake lives with the reputation of someone who ended a monster's reign; three years after he killed the man they called the Grabber, neighborhood kids and adults treat him like a hard-edged kid who does not flinch. Finney smokes weed to deaden memories and keeps his emotions tightly wound. His sister Gwen shares his scars in a different way: she keeps having nightmares. One late afternoon, Gwen catches Finney battering a new kid who challenged him; she scolds him and the clash shows how each of them copes--Finney with fists and substances, Gwen with questions and fear. The two friends, along with Ernesto "Ernie" Arellano, Robin's younger brother and a steady presence, drift together through a strained normalcy. Ernesto quietly flirts with Gwen; she does not push him away.
Gwen's sleep gives her images that visit with blunt clarity. In one vision she watches a boy named Felix arrive at Camp Alpine Lake, nervous about starting at the camp. The Grabber lurks behind the trees, chases Felix, slashes him, and hauls his body toward the frozen lake. Before he throws the corpse into the water, Felix carves a W into the ice. In another dream she sees Cal, a boisterous camper, being chased and then dismembered; pieces of his body are shoved into an oven and the remainder is disposed into the lake, and Cal's spirit scratches a B into the ice. A third dream shows a boy called Spike who plays in a camp band; the Grabber beheads him and Spike leaves an H carved into the surface. Gwen wakes with her sheets soaked and sometimes sleepwalks; once she walks to her bedroom window and freezes, convinced she sees the Grabber standing across the street until Finney rouses her.
Worried and disbelieved at school--girls taunt her for researching ghosts and occult lore--the siblings piece together a pattern. They find a pamphlet for Camp Alpine Lake and learn that their mother Hope used to be a counselor there; she was nicknamed "Starlight." Gwen explains her dreams to Finney and Ernesto and persuades them to join her as Counselors in Training so they can search the camp where these murders began. Their father Terrence, sober and changed since the earlier trauma that affected the family, reluctantly allows them to go. They load into a truck and drive into a blizzard. Road conditions worsen until Finney leaves the vehicle and runs down the highway to check their location.
Camp Alpine Lake sits under white skies and a wind that wants to swallow sound. Armando "Mando," the camp supervisor, and his niece Mustang find the trio in the storm and bring them inside. Mando is practical and hard-faced, but he recognizes old faces: he knew Hope when the camp was last open. Mando assigns Gwen to a separate dorm from the boys, which irritates her. The small staff includes two camp workers, Kenneth and Barbara; Barbara reacts with disdain when Gwen shows up in the boys' dorm the first night, openly judging the girl's manners and language.
The black payphone outside the old lodge begins to ring. Finney ignores it until the ringing becomes insistent; at last he answers and hears a voice on the line that sounds like Felix, calling from somewhere unseen. When the connection dies, Finney feels the old dread settle back into his chest. The phone becomes a conduit for the dead: Gwen once again answers the ringing in an old house that belonged to the Grabber and hears Hope's voice on the other end, the same voice that spoke in 1957. As she listens, she sees an apparition of Max--he has the Grabber's axe lodged in his skull--and then the call cuts off. Finney finds her there and wakes her; Gwen tells him she heard their mother but does not understand the full meaning.
Gwen keeps reliving the camp deaths in her sleep. One night she drifts into a dream where she stands with Felix, Cal, and Spike; they lead her through the camp until the Grabber appears and lashes at her. The ghost boys' fingers press into her arm and leave a wound that begins to bleed in waking life. At other moments the Grabber manifests physically: he appears at windows as a smear of snow and blood and sends a projection of his mask over lodge glass. He stalks the camp between dream and waking, touching the living with the violence he enacted in life.
The campers and staff convene in the chapel when the attacks escalate. Mando, who has pages of old camp photos, listens as Gwen recounts her visions. He recognizes faces from her descriptions: Felix, Cal, Spike. He flips through an old group photograph and points to one man--he was a maintenance worker named Bill, a man the older counselors called "Wild Bill Hickok." The initials W, B, H carved in the ice match the letters the three boys left; the victims signaled the name of their killer with their last gestures. Mando explains that the camp is where Bill's crimes started and that Hope had been one of the counselors the final year the camp ran.
Hope becomes central to new, darker information. In one of Gwen's dreams, she watches Hope move through a different timeline: Hope follows a lead about a missing paperboy named Billy, discovers him at Bill's house, and confronts Bill. Bill abducts Hope, kills her, and rigs the scene to look like suicide; Terrence finds his wife hanging and believes he has lost her by her own hand. The dream clarifies a hidden truth--Hope did not hang herself. The Grabber had killed her and staged the scene to look like suicide so that the crime would stay hidden. In the dream Bill taunts Gwen, telling her that Hope's death was a lesson and that the world in which he exists is fed by fear. When the Grabber strikes Gwen in the dream he slices her arm with an axe and she wakes with blood on the sheets.
The Grabber uses the camp's devices to talk back. He calls Finney from the payphone and speaks directly, blaming Finney for forcing him into violent acts, telling Finney that his life now is punishment. At one point he strolls up on Finney outside and takes his weed, flicking it into the snow and telling Finney that it is "not even good stuff." The taunts are personal; the Grabber wants revenge for the life Finney took from him and seeks to make the survivor suffer.
The group resolves to find the boys' bodies beneath the frozen lake because Gwen and Mando agree that freeing the bodies will strip the Grabber of his supernatural hold. They form search parties and probe the ice. Mando works with Terrence and others; Finney and Ernesto tie themselves to ropes and use poles and hooks to test for voids under the ice. The names from Gwen's dreams prove accurate: Mando locates Felix's body under the frozen surface while Terrence and other men try to break through the solid sheet.
As the search continues, violence erupts in the open air. The Grabber strikes Kenneth with his axe, dragging him across the ice; Kenneth slams into Barbara, hurling her face-first onto the frozen surface and breaking her nose. Panic spreads. Terrence springs into action: he backs his snowplow to the lake and, at a desperate moment, dives into the freezing water to reach submerged barrels. Sleep-bound Gwen, guided by the ghost boys, helps push two barrels beneath the surface to float upward; inside those barrels are Cal and Spike. Terrence hauls them free while the group scrambles on the ice.
The Grabber grows furious as the corpses surface and his power wanes. He tears off his mask for one of his last violent moments and reveals a ravaged, decomposed face beneath. He tries to hunt down Finney and Terrence. In a brutal physical fight near the lake's edge, Finney charges him despite the Grabber's tendency to slip between worlds; Finney slams the attacker's face into the ice again and again even when the assailant's form flickers. Gwen joins the assault; she finds a tool and hacks at the Grabber with determined fury. The ghost boys--Felix, Cal, Spike, and the other dead children whose faces Gwen has learned--pull on the Grabber, wrapping limbs around him. Together, the living and the dead force Bill to the hole in the lake. The children tug, and the Grabber is hauled beneath the water and dragged into the thick black cold he has long used to hide bodies. Where the Grabber had once dragged victims into the lake, the lake now takes him.
During the struggle, the Grabber injures people. He slashes Gwen's arm in the dream and the wound opens in reality; he knocks Mando through the ice--Mando disappears under the surface for a heartbeat before the group pulls him back out. Kenneth ends up battered and Barbara lies on the ice with a broken nose. The Grabber's last visible act is rage at losing his hold over both fear and the dead.
With Bill pulled under, the physical manifestations of his terror recede. Gwen wakes out of the dream bleeding and exhausted; she discovers Finney and Ernesto at her side. She kisses Ernesto in a private, tentative way--a kiss that is soft after a night of fight and fear. The camp staff check bodies and tally wounds; Mando uses the phone to call families and name the boys their relatives have been searching for. He informs them that Felix, Cal, and Spike have been found and that the camp's long, secreted violence has come to light.
Hope's voice returns to Gwen one last time at the black payphone. Gwen answers the ringing receiver and hears her mother speak across whatever boundary now separates them. Hope tells Gwen that she is proud, offers words that steady Gwen's nerves, and leaves a message for Finney, referencing what Robin once meant to him. Gwen breaks into tears on the icy phone booth's bench; she tells Finney what she has heard. The four--Gwen, Finney, Ernesto, and Terrence--pack up and leave the camp together. As the truck rumbles away from Camp Alpine Lake, Mando makes final arrangements and calls the families, passing on details and closure.
Death records in this sequence are specific. Bill, the man known as the Grabber and once a maintenance worker called Wild Bill Hickok, is killed when Finney, Gwen and the spirits of the murdered children force him through a hole in Lake Maru; Finney hammers Bill's head against the ice repeatedly, Gwen hacks at him, and the spirits pull him beneath the frozen water, where he drowns or is otherwise taken into the icy depths he used to claim as a grave. Hope Adler is killed by Bill years earlier when she discovers Billy, the paperboy lost to him; Bill abducts and murders Hope, then stages her body as a suicide by leaving her hanging so Terrence will find her. Felix is murdered by Bill at Camp Alpine Lake--Bill chases Felix through the woods, slashes him, and throws his body into the camp's frozen lake, where Felix's ghost later scratches a W into the ice. Cal is hunted down by Bill, dismembered with pieces forced into an oven and the rest dumped into the lake; Cal's ghost scratches a B into the ice. Spike is decapitated by Bill--his head is cut in half and his remains end up in the lake; Spike leaves an H scratched into the ice. In addition to these, Kenneth is struck with the Grabber's axe and dragged across the ice, suffering blunt and sharp trauma; Barbara is knocked down and breaks her nose in the collision caused by Kenneth sliding; Mando is shoved through ice and nearly drowns before others rescue him. The earlier victims from Finney's first encounter--Robin and Max--appear as ghosts or references: Max appears in Gwen's vision with an axe lodged in his head, signaling Bill's pattern of using an axe as a weapon.
After the final confrontation, the camp's immediate danger subsides. Mando, making calls, informs family members of the boys discovered beneath the ice. Terrence accepts that Hope did not take her own life; he stays with his children as they leave the snowbound camp. Finney and Gwen climb into the truck and watch the camp recede. Gwen, still shaken, answers the black payphone one last time and listens as Hope speaks briefly, expressing pride and handing a message to Finney from beyond. Gwen cries, tells Finney what she has heard, and then joins the others, riding back down the road toward Denver with Terrence and Ernesto beside them. The frozen surface of Lake Maru reflects a wind that has calmed; beneath that ice, the Grabber lies with the bodies he once hid, and the living drive away, each carrying the cost of a night where past crimes were finally named and avenged. The final images show the four of them on their way home, a family and their friend moving forward after the drag of old horrors has been made visible and, for now, ended.
What is the ending?
Short Narrative Ending:
Unfortunately, I do not have specific details about the ending of Black Phone 2 as the movie has not yet been released. However, it is known that the sequel involves the Grabber stalking kids from beyond the grave, similar to Freddy Krueger's approach in horror movies.
Expanded Answer:
Since Black Phone 2 has not been released yet, I can only provide information based on what is known about the film's premise and setup. Here's how the story might unfold based on available details:
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Introduction and Setup: The film begins with Finney Shaw, the protagonist from the first movie, possibly still dealing with the aftermath of his encounter with the Grabber. The story might explore how Finney and his sister Gwen are coping with their experiences. The Grabber, despite being killed in the first film, is somehow able to continue his malevolent activities from beyond the grave.
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The Return of the Grabber: The Grabber's return could be facilitated through supernatural means, allowing him to haunt or influence the living. This could involve eerie and unsettling scenes where Finney and others begin to experience strange occurrences that hint at the Grabber's presence.
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Escalation of Events: As the story progresses, the supernatural events escalate, and Finney finds himself facing a new wave of terror. The Grabber's actions from beyond the grave could involve manipulating objects, appearing in visions, or even possessing others to continue his evil deeds.
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Climax and Confrontation: The climax of the movie would likely involve Finney and possibly his sister Gwen confronting the Grabber's supernatural form. This confrontation could be a mix of psychological horror and supernatural elements, as they try to understand and defeat the Grabber once and for all.
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Resolution and Fate of Characters: Without specific details, it's difficult to predict the exact fate of each character. However, the resolution might involve Finney and Gwen finding a way to put the Grabber's spirit to rest or learning to live with the trauma they've experienced. The movie could end on a hopeful note, with the characters emerging stronger and more resilient, or it might leave room for further sequels by introducing new mysteries or threats.
Given the lack of specific information about the ending, these descriptions are speculative based on the known premise of Black Phone 2. The actual ending will depend on the creative choices made by the filmmakers.
Who dies?
Yes, characters do die in Black Phone 2 (2025). The sequel continues the story from the first film, where the antagonist known as the Grabber was definitively killed by Finney Blake, who broke his neck with a phone cord after trapping him in a pit during his captivity. This death is a key plot point carried into the sequel.
In Black Phone 2, the Grabber, despite his physical death, continues to have a supernatural presence, making calls to Finney's psychic sister Gwen in her dreams and haunting the story with disturbing visions. The sequel explores the lingering evil connected to the Grabber and the trauma experienced by Finney and Gwen.
Regarding new deaths in Black Phone 2, the available information does not specify any new characters dying or the circumstances of such deaths. The focus is on the psychological and supernatural horror elements involving the siblings and the Grabber's ongoing influence beyond death. The cast list includes new characters such as Armando, the camp supervisor, and others, but no detailed accounts of their deaths are provided in the current sources.
To summarize:
- The Grabber is confirmed dead physically, killed by Finney in the first film.
- The sequel features supernatural elements where the Grabber's spirit continues to affect characters.
- No explicit new character deaths or their circumstances are detailed in the available information about Black Phone 2 as of now.
If you want detailed descriptions of deaths from the first film or more on the supernatural aspects in the sequel, I can provide that as well.
Is there a post-credit scene?
Yes, the movie Black Phone 2 (2025) does have a post-credit scene. This scene is described as thrilling and reveals important hints about the story's future, continuing the horror narrative established in the first film.
In Black Phone 2, Finn, now 17, struggles with life after his captivity, while his sister begins receiving calls in her dreams from the black phone and experiences disturbing visions related to three boys being stalked at a winter camp called Alpine Lake. The post-credit scene likely ties into these supernatural elements and the ongoing threat of The Grabber, who, despite being dead, is suggested to still have a presence or influence, as teased by the original story's author Joe Hill.
While the exact details of the post-credit scene are not fully disclosed in the search results, it is clear that it sets up further developments for the sequel and expands on the eerie mythology surrounding the black phone and The Grabber.
How is Ethan Hawke's character, The Grabber, able to appear in Black Phone 2 despite being killed in the first film?
The Grabber was killed at the end of the first film, but in Black Phone 2, it is suggested that he may have become a supernatural entity who continues to torment children from beyond the grave. Joe Hill, the original story writer, hinted that although The Grabber is dead, he might not be as gone as initially thought, allowing his presence to persist in the sequel.
What role does Finney's sister Gwen play in Black Phone 2?
In Black Phone 2, Gwen begins receiving calls in her dreams from the black phone and experiences disturbing visions related to new victims being stalked at a winter camp called Alpine Lake. Her experiences are central to the unfolding plot as Finney struggles with life after his captivity.
Who are the new characters introduced in Black Phone 2 and what are their connections to the story?
New characters include Demián Bichir as the supervisor of Alpine Lake camp, Arianna Rivas as the supervisor's niece, and Anna Lore in an unknown role, possibly one of The Grabber's new victims. Miguel Mora returns as the brother of Robin, a victim from the first film.
What is the setting for the new supernatural events in Black Phone 2?
The sequel is set around a winter camp known as Alpine Lake, where three boys are being stalked, and Gwen experiences visions and calls related to these events, linking the supernatural occurrences to this new location.
How does Finney's character develop in Black Phone 2?
Finney is now 17 years old and is shown struggling with life after his traumatic captivity. The story explores his ongoing challenges and possibly his connection to the supernatural events affecting his sister and the new victims.
Is this family friendly?
The movie Black Phone 2 (2025) is not family friendly; it is rated R and falls within the horror genre, indicating content unsuitable for children or sensitive viewers.
Potentially objectionable or upsetting aspects include:
- Disturbing visions and supernatural horror elements involving calls from a sinister black phone and stalking by a killer.
- Themes of kidnapping, captivity, and trauma, as the main character struggles with life after surviving an abductor.
- Scenes set in a winter camp where boys are stalked by a killer, implying suspenseful and frightening sequences.
- The presence of a vengeful, malevolent entity connected to past violent crimes, which may include graphic or intense moments.
These elements suggest the film contains intense horror, psychological trauma, and possibly violent or frightening scenes that could be upsetting for children or sensitive individuals. No detailed plot spoilers are revealed here, but the overall tone and content are clearly mature and intense.