Ethan Hawke's Chilling New R-Rated Thriller Is Killing It As No. 1 Movie In The US On Streaming

2 weeks ago 7

Published Jan 26, 2026, 3:31 PM EST

Adam Bentz is a senior news writer at ScreenRant, where he has authored nearly 5,000 articles, including features and lists. He studied creative writing and English with a concentration in screenwriting at Southern New Hampshire University and interned as a writer/journalist for The Borgen Project, an influential organization that fights global poverty.

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Black Phone 2 is killing it as the No. 1 movie in the United States on streaming. The 2025 supernatural horror film serves as a sequel to The Black Phone (2022) and features Ethan Hawke reprising his role as the Grabber, a serial child abductor and murderer. The sequel was released in theaters on October 17 and started streaming on Peacock on January 16.

Now, Black Phone 2 ranks first on Peacock's Top 10 movies in the United States, where it has been for the past nine days since its release, per FlixPatrol. It ranks above The Hunger Games in second, Gabby Dollhouse: The Movie, Bugonia, The Hunger Games: Catching Fire, The Hunger Games: Mockingjay - Part 1, The Hunger Games: Mockingjay - Part 2, Shrek Forever After, and Despicable Me in tenth.

Directed once again by Scott Derrickson, who co-wrote the script with C. Robert Cargill, Black Phone 2 continues following siblings Finney (Mason Thames) and Gwen (Madeleine McGraw), joined by their new friend Ernesto (Miguel Mora), as they travel to a winter youth camp to investigate a mystery tied to the Grabber's earliest victims, whose ghost now haunts the camp.

In addition to Ethan Hawke as the Grabber, Black Phone 2's cast also includes Jeremy Davies and James Ransone reprising their roles from the first film, with Demián Bichir, Arianna Rivas, Graham Abbey, Anna Lore, Simon Webster, Shepherd Munroe, and Chase B. Robertson joining the cast. After playing Robin in the first film, Miguel Mora now plays his brother, Ernesto.

Madeleine McGraw and Ethan Hawke facing off in Black Phone 2

Black Phone 2 received mostly positive reviews from critics for treating the fallout of the first film with real weight, delivering a haunting sequel that draws powerful scares and reflective themes from the trauma left behind, resulting in a strong 72% Rotten Tomatoes score, although a decrease from the original film's 81% score.

Audiences agreed, saying that the eerie mythology carries forward in Black Phone 2, calling it a chilling sequel that connects deeply with fans of the original and provides a rewarding narrative conclusion, resulting in an 83% audience score, also a slight step down from the first film's 88% score.

Black Phone 2 was also a solid box office success, making $132 million against its $30 million budget, though this was also less than the original movie, which made over $161 million against its smaller $16–18 million budget. Nevertheless, Black Phone 2 has been a big hit on streaming, as has Ethan Hawke's The Lowdown on Disney+/Hulu and The Magnificent Seven (2017) on Netflix.