Is Black Phone 2 a Stealth Nightmare on Elm Street Movie?

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Spoilers ahead for the plot and ending of Black Phone 2.

The saying “Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery” might seem like an excuse for copying, but there’s still something to it. In horror movies, it’s common to see films inspired by earlier works, as the genre constantly evolves by building on what came before. Sometimes this results in uninspired copies, but films like *Scream* and *Get Out* successfully build upon and improve the movies that influenced them. Ideally, a great horror film both honors the past and tries something new, creating a dialogue with the genre’s history.

The new movie, *Black Phone 2*, doesn’t quite live up to its potential. It’s not necessarily the fact that it borrows elements from classic horror films, but rather that it feels like a weaker version of stories we’ve seen done well before. The first *Black Phone* had an interesting premise – a kidnapped boy, Finney (Mason Thames), receives calls from the ghosts of the killer’s previous victims who try to help him escape (Ethan Hawke is the Grabber). However, the sequel attempts to continue the story after the Grabber’s death by having him invade the dreams of Finney’s sister, Gwen (Madeleine McGraw). This deviates significantly from the original story by Joe Hill, and the screenwriters have essentially turned the villain into a character reminiscent of Freddy Krueger.

While the first film, *The Black Phone*, hinted at supernatural elements with Gwen’s premonitions and the idea that death isn’t final, *Black Phone 2* feels surprisingly similar to the *Nightmare on Elm Street* movies. These similarities are so strong that it makes you wonder if this sequel is a way for Universal to revive that franchise, especially since the future of *Nightmare on Elm Street* has been uncertain since the 2010 remake. Let’s take a closer look at how the two series overlap.

The Grabber returns from the dead to attack through dreams.

Let’s look at the similarities to other horror films: after Finney breaks his neck, the villain, known as the Grabber, can only attack through Gwen’s dreams – a tactic famously used by Freddy Krueger in *A Nightmare on Elm Street*. Like Freddy, the Grabber is driven by revenge. Freddy targeted the children of those who killed him, and the Grabber seeks revenge on Finney by going after his sister, Gwen. Both villains also grow stronger by feeding on the souls of their victims. The Grabber’s power comes from the spirits of three boys he murdered decades ago at Alpine Lake, a Christian camp where he committed his crimes. These boys now draw Gwen to the camp, where she, Finney, their friend Ernesto, camp supervisor Armando, and other staff members must work together to help the lost souls find peace.

Gwen’s stay at Alpine Lake quickly turns terrifying. On her first night, she has disturbing dreams about the murdered boys and shockingly experiences physical sensations in her dreams that also affect her body while she’s asleep. Things escalate when the Grabber begins appearing in her dreams, mirroring scenes from *A Nightmare on Elm Street*. He lures her into the camp kitchens, which feel intensely hot and dangerous, and starts violently throwing her around. Finney, Ernesto, and the camp staff find her being tossed around by an unseen force, a scene reminiscent of Tina’s death in the original *Nightmare on Elm Street*. Fortunately, Gwen manages to wake up before suffering the same fate.

The Grabber gets a familiar backstory.

The story presents the reveal of the killer’s identity – the man who killed three boys in the 1950s and then kidnapped Finney and other children – as a surprise. Before becoming known as ‘The Grabber,’ he worked as a maintenance man at Alpine Lake, where people called him Wild Bill Hickok. No one seems to know his actual name, which is odd considering Armando never realized this man was a former camp employee. While similar to the original *Nightmare on Elm Street* movies – where Freddy Krueger was a power plant janitor – this origin story more closely resembles the backstory given in the 2010 remake, where he was a preschool groundskeeper who abused and murdered children after spending time with them.

The villain in *The Black Phone* isn’t explicitly portrayed as a pedophile, and the movies deliberately avoid confirming this. This is similar to the original *Nightmare on Elm Street* series, where the creator, Wes Craven, initially envisioned Freddy Krueger as a child molester but later changed him to a child killer. However, the implication remained, and was even made clearer in the remake. The same subtle connection exists in *The Black Phone*, where the villain’s focus on teenage boys is never directly addressed. His comments about a constant “need” or missing “the boys” strongly suggest a disturbing undercurrent. The film also emphasizes the trauma experienced by the protagonist, Finney, and his reluctance to share the details of his captivity. Like *Nightmare*, *Black Phone 2* relies on suggestion, letting the audience fill in the blanks without showing anything explicit.

Gwen becomes a dream warrior.

The new movie *Black Phone 2* clearly takes inspiration from the 1987 film *Dream Warriors*. In *Dream Warriors*, the original heroine Nancy returns to help new victims learn to control their dreams and fight back against Freddy Krueger. *Black Phone 2* follows a similar path, with Finney guiding his sister to use her dream powers for self-defense. She’s been practicing lucid dreaming, and eventually realizes she can control her dreams to unlock a hidden strength she doesn’t possess while awake – as seen when she mentally destroys a phone booth the villain has trapped her in. While the film doesn’t fully explore this dream-fighting ability, it’s evident that the filmmakers are fans of the third *Nightmare* movie.

The Grabber is defeated through the proper burial of bones.

Freddy Krueger is famously hard to kill – even the title of one movie is *Freddy’s Dead*, and he came back in later films like *New Nightmare* and *Freddy vs. Jason*. However, he’s usually defeated *within* each movie. A common way to do this involves finding his bones. In *Dream Warriors*, Nancy’s dad and another character had to find Freddy’s bones and bless them with holy water to finally stop him. Later, in *The Dream Child*, someone had to locate the remains of Freddy’s mother, for reasons that weren’t quite as straightforward, but the principle was the same: giving the dead a proper burial can resolve a lot of issues.

It’s not surprising that the ending of *Black Phone 2* centers around finding the remains of the three campers the Grabber murdered, which he hid in barrels beneath the ice of a frozen lake. The finale is complex, featuring the Grabber on skates—one of the film’s better moments—and a dreaming Gwen who is able to swim underwater and locate the barrels. Gwen and Finney then overpower the Grabber, aided by the spirits of the boys he killed, who help pull him away. While this isn’t a direct copy, the victims in *The Dream Master* do destroy their attacker. And although the idea of vengeful ghosts isn’t new, given how much *Black Phone 2* borrows from the *Nightmare on Elm Street* series, the connection is hard to ignore. Ultimately, *Black Phone 2*’s reliance on *Nightmare* feels more like a lack of originality than outright copying—but if the Grabber ever crosses paths with Jason Voorhees, Freddy Krueger might need to consider legal action.

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2025-10-18 00:56