Movie Monday: ‘Black Phone 2’ Dials Up Win

The horror! The horror!

That’s what Kurtz said at the end of Joseph Conrad’s book The Heart of Darkness (and in Francis Ford Coppola’s Apocalypse Now). But it also might be what “Movie Monday” would say about the 2025 box office.

In what has otherwise been a pretty slow year, horror movies have been standout performers. From Sinners to Weapons to The Conjuring: Last Rites, fright flicks have routinely made studio accountants cackle with fiendish glee.

The latest film to trigger an unsettling smile in Hollywood? Black Phone 2. The sequel dialed up an estimated $26.5 million from stateside audiences—more than doubling the take of its nearest competitor, thus coasting to an easy box-office win. Black Phone 2 banked another $15.5 million overseas to bring its worldwide total to $42 million. Talk about calling collect.

Last weekend’s champ, Tron: Ares, lost two-thirds of its weekend-over-weekend audience en route to a second-place finish. Ares captured $11.1 million in North America to bring its domestic tally to $54.6 million.

Good Fortune suffered a bit of bad fortune in its debut weekend. The Keanu Reeves-fronted comedy mustered just $6.2 million to finish a distant third. Still, let’s remember that the film’s apparent inspiration, It’s a Wonderful Life, also disappointed at the box office. And we’re still watching that film nearly 80 years later.

Two holdovers—One Battle After Another and Roofman—close out the box office’s top five. One Battle After Another pocketed $4 million stateside, which helped boost its total domestic gross to $61.9 million and its worldwide total to a very respectable $162.5 million. Roofman, meanwhile, swiped $3.7 million this weekend, pushing its own domestic haul to $15.5 million. (The film’s overseas take is a negligible $1.7 million, giving it a global gross of $17.2 million.)

Truth & Treason, a faith-based film based on a real-life German teen who stood up to Hitler, landed in sixth place with $2.7 million. An awards-season hopeful called After the Hunt was more of an afterthought, scoring less than $1.6 million as it expanded from six theaters to more than 1,200.

As for the kid-centric film Grow, well, Fathom hasn’t provided any estimates for its weekend performance—which may not be a promising sign. I fear that moviegoers gave this pumpkin-based film a frosty reception.