When The Black Phone hit theatres in 2021, it was a certified smash, with great reviews, over $161 million at the box office, and a ton of buzz. Usually, that kind of success means a sequel is a done deal, but director Scott Derrickson and co-writer C. Robert Cargill weren’t about to cash in unless they had the right idea. Turns out, it took a pitch from the story’s original author, Joe Hill, to convince them to pick up the phone again for Black Phone 2.
“He just said, ‘A phone rings, Finney answers, and it’s The Grabber calling from hell,’” Cargill told Bloody Disgusting. And just like that, they were off.
Set four years after the events of the first movie, the sequel deals with Finney (Mason Thames) struggling to deal with the trauma from his kidnapping and his killing of the Grabber (Ethan Hawke). However, the notorious serial killer isn’t about to let death stop him, and he reaches out from beyond the grave to take revenge.
“The first starting point for me was, where are we going to set this?” Derrickson said. “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.“
Millions of Friday the 13th fans, who have longed for that very setting, are pulling their hair out.
The official synopsis for The Black Phone 2: “The Grabber (Hawke) seeks vengeance on Finn (Thames) from beyond the grave by menacing Finn’s younger sister, Gwen (McGraw). As Finn, now 17, struggles with life after his captivity, the headstrong 15-year-old Gwen begins receiving calls in her dreams from the black phone and seeing disturbing visions of three boys being stalked at a winter camp known as Alpine Lake. Determined to solve the mystery and end the torment for both her and her brother, Gwen persuades Finn to visit the camp during a winter storm. There, she uncovers a shattering intersection between The Grabber and her own family’s history. Together, she and Finn must confront a killer who has grown more powerful in death and more significant to them than either could imagine.” The film will hit theaters on October 17, so be sure to check out a review from our own Ryan Cultrera right here.
Bloody Disgusting
