When The Black Phone arrived in 2022, it struck like lightning: a horror film both intimate and terrifying, rooted in the raw vulnerability of childhood.
Adapted from Joe Hill’s short story, the film drew on writer-producer-director Scott Derrickson’s memories of growing up in Colorado, grounding its supernatural terror in unsettling realism. Audiences embraced it not only for its scares but for its honesty. The film earned more than $160 million worldwide, introduced the Grabber (Ethan Hawke) as a chilling new figure in the genre’s canon and established The Black Phone as one of the decade’s most distinctive original horror films.
For Derrickson, the success was personal. “It was extremely rewarding to see audiences embrace the film the way they did, specifically because so much of it came directly from my own childhood,” Derrickson says. “As an artist, seeing those personal feelings and memories connect with so many people—especially young people—added a sense of purpose to the darker memories of my childhood. It made me feel like it was all somehow meant to be.”
For writer-producer C. Robert Cargill, Derrickson’s longtime writing partner and co-founder of their production company Crooked Highway, the sequel gave them an opportunity to once again draw from their own lives. “With Black Phone 2, we were able to keep building on characters rooted in our own childhoods and what it was like growing up in the ’70s and ‘80s,” Cargill says.
“A lot of our real experiences are buried in these stories. That emotional grounding lets us balance the horror with heart. And it is part of why the first film kept growing after its release. When The Black Phone hit Peacock, it took off even more. Teenagers were watching it, making memes and TikToks, remixing scenes. For a lot of them, it was their first horror movie, and they fell in love with the genre. That is when Scott and I started getting messages every day from people asking, ‘When is the sequel? Is there a prequel? Are you making Black Phone 2?’”
Though Derrickson’s career has included genre touchstones such as Sinister, The Exorcism of Emily Rose and Marvel’s Doctor Strange, Black Phone 2 marks the first sequel he has directed. His decision to return came not from expectation but inspiration.
“It certainly did not feel unfinished,” Derrickson says. “I did not feel obligated to make a sequel. What started me down the path of considering the idea was getting an email from Joe Hill with a basic sequel concept. I did not use all of what he pitched, but there was a central notion that I thought was fantastic. And then I realized that if I waited a few years until the kids from the first film were older, I could make a sequel with high school characters. I felt that Finn and Gwen’s story would be worth continuing at that stage of life.”
Cargill adds: “The instinct was to move fast, but we decided to let them grow up a little. We had always talked about doing a high school movie, so we set this one four years later, with the kids now in high school.”
That seed quickly grew into a story with wider scope and deeper stakes.
“When Joe shared his idea with us, he said, ‘I don’t know how or where it happens, but the phone rings, Finn answers, and hears: ‘Hello, Finn. It’s the Grabber, calling from hell,’” Cargill says. “The moment we heard it, we knew that was the movie. From there, it was about building around that idea, and that is what became Black Phone 2.”
The new chapter begins four years after Finn’s (Mason Thames) harrowing escape from the Grabber’s basement. Though the Grabber is gone, Finn is still scarred by the trauma of what happened. His younger sister Gwen (Madeleine McGraw), whose visions once helped save him, now finds herself plagued by disturbing dreams again. In them, she sees images of three boys hunted at a remote winter camp called Alpine Lake. The haunting draws Gwen to the center of a new mystery, with the bond between brother and sister once again defining the fight for survival.
“One of the core themes of The Black Phone was the idea of children carrying the sins of their father, and that continues here,” Cargill says. “In this film, Finn is coping in the same ways his father once did. When we meet him again, he’s numbing himself from the past, falling into the same patterns. We wanted to explore how trauma echoes through families and whether that cycle can be broken.”
Adolescence gave the sequel both its tone and scale. “Picking up with these characters four years later to see how they had changed—and how they had not—was creatively very interesting,” Derrickson says. “As a teenager in Colorado, I went to several Christian winter youth camps, and that became the primary setting for the film. When you are 15, 16 or 17 years old, the emotions you feel are some of the most powerful you will feel during your lifetime. It seemed to me that those bigger and more volatile feelings merited a bigger and more violent movie.”
The influences are rooted in Derrickson’s own history yet also nod to the genre’s lineage
“I am less interested in drawing from other people’s work than in expanding on what elements from my own work seem unique to me,” Derrickson says. “In this case, it was the use of Super 8 footage in very specific ways, drawing on my own memories at Colorado high school winter camps in the early ‘80s and channeling some of the bigger feelings I had when I was a teenager at that time. But I do think all the horror films I saw in the ‘80s still had a kind of invasive, inevitable influence. All the horror camp films—Friday the 13th and A Nightmare on Elm Street being the biggest most obvious ones—and of course, some key imagery from the much more obscure 1983 film Curtains. If you know that film, the homage is clear and unabashed.”
Cargill adds: “And of course, you cannot escape Stephen King’s influence. Scott and I have always been deeply influenced by King, and we built on that in the first film.” King also happens to have deeply influenced author Joe Hill, too. King is his father. “In this film, Gwen is embracing and developing her abilities, while Finn is rejecting his,” Cargill continues. “That duality really echoes those early King stories, especially Firestarter, which made a huge impact on me.”
The creative partnership between Derrickson and Cargill remains the film’s backbone
“Scott is a visionary storyteller with an incredible sense of what works on screen,” Cargill says. “We have a shorthand when we write, which lets us move quickly and take risks. On set, Scott’s superpower is knowing exactly when something is not working. Watching him solve problems in real time is remarkable. He is confident, collaborative and completely locked into the story he wants to tell.”
Derrickson adds: “Cargill started as my writing partner and ended up as Best Man at my wedding. We have been through a lot together and are as close personally as we are professionally. What keeps it creatively fulfilling is the material, of course. It is always about telling a good story. That drives everything.”
For producer Jason Blum, the film reaffirmed what first drew him to the project. “The script for Black Phone 2 reminded me what an incredible foundation Joe Hill’s story gave us, and how brilliantly Scott and Cargill have built on it,” Blum says. “They’ve deepened the mythology while keeping the intimacy of the first film, balancing horror, emotion and character in a way that feels real. That’s what makes great horror—it has to matter, it has to connect—and they’ve delivered that again here.”
Four years after escaping his abductor, Finney (Mason Thames) is now 17 and grappling with trauma and fame as the sole survivor. Four years ago, 13-year-old Finn killed his abductor and escaped, becoming the sole survivor of the Grabber. But true evil transcends death … and the phone is ringing again.
Ethan Hawke returns to the most sinister role of his career as the Grabber seeks vengeance on Finn (Mason Thames) from beyond the grave by menacing Finn’s younger sister, Gwen (Madeleine 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.
Black Phone 2 was inspired by a blend of personal memories, iconic horror imagery, and a desire to evolve the emotional depth of the original film.
Director Scott Derrickson drew heavily from his own experiences attending winter camps in the Rocky Mountains, which shaped the eerie new setting of Alpine Lake Youth Camp—a stark departure from the urban backdrop of the first film.
The isolation, snowstorms, and haunting quiet of the mountains offered a fresh canvas for fear, reminiscent of The Shining, which directly influenced the film’s atmosphere.
Author Joe Hill, whose short story inspired the original, pitched the sequel’s concept, driven by the enduring power of The Grabber’s mask—an image he likened to horror icons like Freddy Krueger and Michael Myers.
Derrickson was initially hesitant to return but was captivated by Hill’s idea and the opportunity to explore Finney and Gwen’s trauma as teenagers, shifting the narrative into a high school coming-of-age horror story.
The result is a sequel that deepens the mythology while embracing a more graphic, emotionally charged tone.
Scott Derrickson is an American filmmaker born on July 16, 1966, in Denver, Colorado. He is best known for his work in the horror genre, directing acclaimed films such as The Exorcism of Emily Rose (2005), Sinister (2012), and The Black Phone (2021), as well as the Marvel blockbuster Doctor Strange (2016). Derrickson studied humanities, philosophy, literature, and theology at Biola University before earning his MFA in film production from USC’s School of Cinematic Arts. His storytelling often blends supernatural elements with emotional depth, and he’s praised for his atmospheric direction and character-driven narratives. Derrickson’s career has spanned over two decades, marked by both indie horror hits and major studio successes. He lives in Austin, Texas, and is married to filmmaker Maggie Levin.
C. Robert Cargill, born September 8, 1975, in San Antonio, Texas, is a screenwriter, novelist, and former film critic. He began his career writing under the pseudonyms Massawyrm (for Ain’t It Cool News) and Carlyle (for Spill.com), before transitioning into screenwriting. Cargill co-wrote Sinister, Doctor Strange, and The Black Phone with frequent collaborator Scott Derrickson. He’s also a published author, known for novels like Dreams and Shadows, Sea of Rust, and Day Zero, which explore themes of mythology, artificial intelligence, and dystopia. Cargill’s writing is characterized by its emotional resonance and genre-blending style. He lives in Austin with his wife and two dogs, and is known for his love of greasy spoon diners and late-night writing sessions.
Joe Hill, born Joseph Hillström King on June 4, 1972, in Bangor, Maine, is a celebrated American author known for his gripping works in horror, dark fantasy, and science fiction. The son of literary giants Stephen King and Tabitha King, Hill chose to write under a pseudonym to establish his own identity in the publishing world, distancing himself from his father’s fame until his breakout success. He graduated from Vassar College in 1995 and began publishing short stories in various magazines and anthologies before releasing his award-winning debut collection, 20th Century Ghosts, in 2005. Hill’s first novel, Heart-Shaped Box (2007), became a bestseller and cemented his reputation as a master of modern horror. He followed it with Horns (2010), later adapted into a film starring Daniel Radcliffe, and NOS4A2 (2013), which inspired a television series on AMC. His fourth novel, The Fireman (2016), debuted at number one on the New York Times bestseller list. Hill is also the co-creator of the acclaimed comic book series Locke & Key, which was adapted into a Netflix series and earned him an Eisner Award for Best Writer. Beyond novels and comics, Hill’s short stories have appeared in numerous anthologies, and his work has won Bram Stoker, British Fantasy, and World Fantasy Awards. He continues to write from New England. His storytelling is marked by emotional depth, inventive horror, and a voice that’s distinctly his own—proving he’s far more than just Stephen King’s son.
