Black Phone 2 and the Importance of Silence

Dylan Z. Alter ‘29 / Emertainment Monthly Staff Writer

Shot and Scored is a series where I break down the impact of music in film, from its style to the way that it is used to create a unique viewing experience.

Music is the connective tissue between a film and its audience. Music defines the emotions and tone of the film, and the ways in which music is applied—what genres are used, how loud the music is, the usage of motif—can elevate it from purely a visual experience into a multimedia masterpiece.

In honor of spooky season, the subject of this article is Black Phone 2, the 2025 sequel to 2021’s The Black Phone. Inspired by a short story of the same name by horror writer Joe Hill, The Black Phone follows Finny (Mason Thames), a young boy who is kidnapped by a child murder called The Grabber (Ethan Hawke). At the end of the first film, Finny kills The Grabber and escapes his basement with the help of the ghosts of other missing kids, whom Finny speaks to through a black rotary phone he finds in the basement. The sequel, Black Phone 2, follows Finny and his sister Gwen (Madeline McGraw) four years after the end of the first movie, as they explore a frozen lake haunted by the spirit of The Grabber—who is out for revenge.

Scoring a horror movie is a challenging task. It can be very easy for music to distract from the scary visuals or remove tension from otherwise tense scenes. Many horror movies have iconic scores, such as the Halloween theme by John Carpenter or The Exorcist’s use of Mike Oldfield’s “Tubular Bells,” but these were usually reserved for the opening credits and were otherwise out of the action.

Black Phone 2, while not a particularly memorable film in most respects, is noteworthy in this respect for the ways in which it uses music, providing a very good example of how to get music in a horror film right by using silence. Most of the movie is completely silent, and the film really only starts using music during the moments leading up to and beyond its climax.

When the film does use music in its early scenes—such as during the opening credits, and as buildup in the film’s several dream sequences—it is turned down to let the sound effects take command of the emotional experience of viewing. Dream sequences in Black Phone 2 are quiet and eery, overlaid with a hazy visual effect that blurs everything out and disorients the viewer. At the same time, they are filled with heavy breathing and slow, methodical sounds of footsteps, heartbeats, and the many cries for help from the film’s several ghosts. 

These sounds echo throughout the space and give weight to silent scenes, which might otherwise feel lacking in much-needed tension.

This focus on sound effects gives the film a very unique feel to the way it paces its scares. Many of the early dream sequences—the main scenes where the film expects viewers to be scared—build up the tension for very little payoff. Gwen sees one of the ghosts getting murdered, then follows the sound of a phone ringing, only to return to the real world without resolving the tension. This, paired with either pure silence or a low, quiet musical drone, works to keep viewers on edge, waiting for the break into full-blown scares. It takes a while to get to that point, almost half the film, but when it does get there, the score pays it off in spades.

The music, composed by Atticus Derrickson—the son of the film’s director Scott Derrickson—is all techno and electronic. The score, during the scary moments, is almost entirely composed of single-note drones that can go on for minutes at a time. Once the film really gets going, the music is allowed to build to a breaking point—usually around the same time as a jumpscare or an escalation of an already tense moment. Compositionally, the music doesn’t do much to set itself apart from other horror films, being very focused on providing intensity to the moments rather than being formally complex.

To be fair to the film, however, that is the point. Horror music shouldn’t stand out, because if it stands out, audiences won’t be focusing on the scary parts of the film.

Black Phone 2 is a prime example of how to properly score a horror film. The way music is used, and in particular how it is absent from the majority of the film—there are only 51 minutes of score in the film’s 114 minute runtime—allow the visual scares to take full advantage of the viewer’s focus and allows tension to build all throughout the first half of the film. The film’s electronic score provides a tense experience while still providing the opportunity for more somber moments during the film’s quieter scenes. Ultimately, the film provides an effective and frightening viewing experience, in large part thanks to the skill of its composer, and the overwhelming power of silence.