Returning director Scott Derrickson (Sinister, V/H/S/85) and co-writer C. Robert Cargill didn’t plan to make sequel Black Phone 2 unless a great idea came along that excited them. That’s when author Joe Hill called.
“He just said, ‘A phone rings, Finney answers, and it’s The Grabber calling from hell,’” Cargill tells Bloody Disgusting.
That was the spark that lit a fire under Derrickson and Cargill, who evolved that idea into a sequel that shifts subgenres completely for a much darker supernatural chiller set against a snowy backdrop. More than lending visual interest, the wintry setting symbolizes the icy core of Dante’s Inferno, fitting considering The Grabber (Ethan Hawke) returns from Hell to torment siblings Finney (Mason Thames) and Gwen (Madeleine McGraw).
“The first starting point for me was, where are we going to set this?” Derrickson says. “I was proud of how the first movie really recreated my experience in North Denver in this working-class neighborhood in 1978. Then, the idea of making it a camp movie, putting it in camp, but not summer camp, winter camp, which I went to as a teenager. And the cold violence of that kind of environment, the Rocky Mountains in winter at night, where it gets down to 60, 70-below, the wind chill factor, and the memories I have of that camp experience, that became very interesting to me because I felt like I hadn’t seen that. We’ve seen lots of summer camp horror. 1982 set winter camp? Interesting.
(from left) Finn (Mason Thames), Ernesto (Miguel Mora) and Gwen (Madeleine McGraw) in Black Phone 2, directed by Scott Derrickson. Photo Credit: Universal Pictures and Blumhouse.
“The whole idea of Hell being a cold place, that all comes from Dante, and the old literature philosophy students, and my love for The Inferno. I just think that the idea of The Grabber being the worst of the worst and coming from the ninth circle of Hell, where people are frozen in ice, is a compelling idea. We quote The Inferno later with, ‘Abandon all hope. You enter here,’ all that, that’s all part of the tapestry of the cold in this movie.“
That The Grabber was sent to Hell mangled and battered, and forced to dispatch his brother Max (James Ransone) as collateral, means the child killer is angrier and more dangerous than ever, especially now that he’s unbound by the mortal coil and supernaturally charged. It’s also a character even more unrecognizable by the layers of burn makeup and the signature mask.
Buried beneath the prosthetics is Hawke channeling his inner Freddy Krueger for the menacing performance. Derrickson confirms Hawke was committed, “Oh, he was there the whole time. He wouldn’t let somebody else do that for him. The only thing he didn’t do was some of his stunts.”
(from left) Ethan Hawke and director Scott Derrickson on the set of Black Phone 2.
Cargill further explains, “Part of his attraction to the first film was that he wanted to work with us again because we all had a great time on Sinister, but he really was like, ‘I have to act in a mask. I don’t get to use my face. It’s only my voice and my hands.’ That excited him as an actor to be able to do the physicality of it. So when it came to the next movie, of course, he wasn’t going to pawn that off onto some stunt guy to wear the mask for him. He wanted to be there and embody The Grabber again. And he did. It would always be cool to walk on set, and there’s Ethan all dressed up, having a blast. Really enjoyed making the movie with us.”
Black Phone 2 is much darker, stylistically and tonally, than its predecessor, with the ’80s analog aesthetic letting Derrickson go harder with the horror. “That’s reflective of the change of a genre, really, Derrickson says. “I think The Black Phone is a supernatural thriller. This is a horror film. I think that’s a coming-of-age, supernatural thriller with middle school kids. This is a high school horror film. The literal changing of genres, in my opinion, merited a significant stylistic shift. They’re made in very, very different ways, and the through-line of the characters, but the look of the movies doesn’t have much in common at all.”
(from left) Gwen (Madeleine McGraw), Mustang (Arianna Rivas) and Ernesto (Miguel Mora) in Black Phone 2, directed by Scott Derrickson. Sabrina Lantos/Universal Pictures and Blumhouse.
Yet, despite the more pronounced horror, Derrickson was much more calculated when it came to the sequel’s body count. “It’s funny because there was some pressure that came to me to kill one of the major characters. I really thought about it, and I got why. One of the studio executives was suggesting it. But I ultimately felt like, if we do this movie right, the experience of it is so immersive, so emotional, and viscerally powerful that that would almost feel, to me, like a pedestrian distraction that could break the spell of what’s happening. Then you’ve got to deal with characters dealing with somebody’s actual death. I just felt like that’s a mistake. This is a different kind of movie.”
It’s a sequel that is also made more unsettling by its score, composed by the director’s son, Atticus Derrickson. Cargill has high praise for the film’s score. “Scott brought a track to me on set when we were shooting one day, and he goes, ‘I just need you to hear this. Just listen to this. This is the track that’s going to happen in this sequence.’ I went off and I listened to it, and I came back and Scott goes, ‘What do you think?’ I was like, ‘I’ve always wanted to make a movie that sounded like this. How did he pull this out of my brain?’ Atticus wanted to make the movie we wanted to make, and you can’t ask for anything better than that.”
Derrickson adds, “He recorded a good six or seven, I think, at least half a dozen tracks before we shot. Those are in the movie. So there are sequences that were really designed to the sonic power of what he wrote. I was visually designing the scenes, listening to it as I shot.”
Black Phone 2 releases in theaters on October 17, 2025.
The post ‘Black Phone 2’ Draws from Dante’s Inferno For Icy Sequel That Puts Horror Forward [Interview] appeared first on Bloody Disgusting!.
