The Black Phone 2 director Scott Derrickson says the upcoming sequel is an in-depth, emotional expansion of the first film, rather than another modern-day horror allegory for trauma.
"I wouldn't have any interest in making a movie that's an allegory for trauma. What's interesting to me are people who've been traumatized," Derrickson tells GamesRadar+. "And the idea of picking Finn and Gwen up four years later when they're high school kids, I was very interested in trying to truthfully represent how they would have responded to the events of the first movie. And Finn with his repressed fear and manifest anger and smoking too much weed and numbing himself out."
The sequel takes place four years after the events of The Black Phone, where a teenage Finney Blake (Mason Thames) is struggling to deal with the trauma he suffered at the hands of the Grabber. His sister Gwen (Madeleine McGraw) is trying her best to offer him support, but she's dealing with her own horrors: dead children are reaching out to her via the psychic powers she inherited from her mother, and she feels called to help. The children lead her and Finney to a winter camp...where the Grabber (Ethan Hawke) is lying somewhere between life and death and waiting for them both.
"That was a really interesting place to start with that character in this film. When [Gwen] having inherited this sort of spiritual gift that was so instrumental in the first movie, growing into that and growing toward the maturity of her mother, and feeling crazy and feeling weird and feeling freaked. So many young women feel so awkward in those high school years. And I just felt like this gave me a route for those characters where we could watch them wrestle with that and struggle with that and find, ideally, you know, the beauty of the movie is them finding some relief from that and some healing in that."
Derrickson penned the script once again with collaborator C. Robert Cargill, after Joe Hill, writer of the original Black Phone short story, called them up with an idea: "What if the Grabber called from hell?"
Though there wasn't a sequel in mind when making the first film, the second gives us a smidge more backstory about the Grabber, while still keeping the focus on Finney and Gwen's journey.
"I think this is also part of what the horror genre is good for, to explore the impact of the horrible. What would actually happen to a kid who was captured by a sadistic child killer and psychologically tortured and tormented in a grungy basement," Derrickson continues. "That would have a great impact on any developing human being. And to do that in a way that didn't feel arch, but felt truthful and interesting and made us both feel bad for Finn, but also be fascinated by the legitimacy of that being how he was coping with his own past."
The cast includes Demián Bichir, Jeremy Davies, Arianna Rivas, Maev Beaty, Graham Abbey, Anna Lore, and Miguel Mora returning this time as Ernesto, the younger brother of Grabber victim Robin Arellano (who Mora played in the first film).
Adds Derrickson: "People go to the movies to feel things. And I really wanted this to be a movie that had a great range of exceedingly powerful emotions, both terror and fear and mystery and intrigue and ultimately empathy and love."
The Black Phone 2 releases in theaters on October 17. For more, check out our list of the best horror movies, or keep up with upcoming horror movies heading your way.
