Interviews
‘Black Phone 2’ Draws from Dante’s Inferno For Icy Sequel That Puts Horror Forward [Interview]
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.
Of all the places to find a coven of witches, the attic above a Christian youth camp is probably the last place you’d think to look. But that’s just what we find in Camp, a surrealist nightmare of feminist empowerment from Canadian filmmaker Avalon Fast.
Emily (Zola Grimmer) is still reckoning with her involvement in a horrific tragedy when she accidentally contributes to the death of her best friend, Charlie (Giselle Morison). Unable to move on, the traumatized teen takes a job at a rural summer camp, hoping to forget her own sorrows by looking after at-risk kids. She quickly connects with a counselor named Clara (Alice Wordsworth) and finds comfort in her close-knit group of female friends. But a mysterious whisper from deep in the woods warns that they may be leading her down a darker path.
Fast burst onto the scene in 2022 with Honeycomb, a psychological horror film that follows a burgeoning matriarchy. Known for their focus on “Girl Horror” stories, the talented young filmmaker tackles similar themes in Camp as Emily leaves the modern world behind to embrace a dark vision of self-discovery through magic.
Ahead of the film’s U.S. release on June 26, Bloody Disgusting sat down with Fast to chat about the nebulous nature of good vs. evil and the intoxicating power of female-driven horror.
Bloody Disgusting: What inspired this unique story? Did you go to religious summer camps when you were young?
Avalon Fast: I did. I went to lots of different summer camps, but all of them were primarily Bible camps. The memory I have of camp is kind of strange. I was very homesick as a kid, and I didn’t necessarily enjoy all my time there. I definitely remember meeting some interesting girls at camp and having that presence of religion hovering around the whole experience.
BD: I really love the film’s gorgeous natural setting. Camp is the kind of surrealist nightmare that you don’t just watch. You feel it too. How did you approach creating this world?
AF: Well, a huge part of it was working with my cinematographer Eily Sprungman, who’s a very close friend. We spent years prepping, shot listing, storyboarding, and mood boarding. She’d had a similar experience to mine. We grew up around the same place, and so we understood each other’s visions from the get-go. But there are so many other pieces that came together. The costuming, the art, and the animated sequences were done by Sofiya Iurkevych. One of our producers, Taylor Nodrick, was obsessed with shooting on Super 8 film. I’ve always wanted to as well, so all the memory sequences were shot on Super 8. It was just a lot of people with an understanding and a vision for what this project was. I’m really happy with the way it turned out.
To the extent that you’re comfortable sharing, what’s your relationship to witchcraft, and what does Camp have to say about modern witches?
Well, that’s the question of Camp. It’s not that I don’t resonate with any of these things, but I specifically wanted Camp to be a little bit ambiguous around what witchcraft looks like. Is this witchcraft? Are these girls witches? Emily explicitly asks if that’s what’s happening here, and the answer isn’t yes. The film isn’t going to answer that question for you. My relationship to magic and witchcraft? It’s tough. I feel like there’s so much magic, connection, and spirituality that comes from these friendships, the closeness of these women, and what’s happening around them. A lot of what Camp is trying to say or show is just that magic can come out of friendship.
I loved watching these female friendships develop. And you’re right. No one ever says the word “coven,” but you can feel that connection, and you can see a change in Emily as those relationships grow. I’m also really fascinated with the way Camp plays with the idea of good and evil. At one point, Clara says, “Maybe God drew us to the devil,” which stopped me in my tracks. How do you view witchcraft or the magic these girls are experiencing in regard to good and evil?
That was such a huge part of the script’s construction. The story is really trying to keep a balance between those two things. I like asking people if they think these girls are good or bad, because I feel like a lot of people come out of the film thinking one or the other. They’ll say things like “thank God Emily found her people” or “God, I really wish she’d gone home.” I just don’t think there’s ever an answer. I wanted to explore the idea of going down the wrong path, especially coming out of grief. What makes you a bad person, and does healing mean you’re looking to become a better person? I don’t have an answer, but I do feel like that’s a huge part of what Camp is asking. What is good? What is bad? Why did God bring me to the devil?
Yes, because this is all happening at “God camp” in Emily’s words. So how can both of those things exist at the same time? Along those lines, I’m also fascinated by the voice Emily hears in the woods. Without spoiling too much, what is this voice asking, and what is required in return?
Emily comes to camp with a shout into the void, asking can anyone hear me? Does anyone want to? And it’s answered so clearly by these girls, specifically responding only with love, care, support, and trust. It’s like her prayers were answered. It doesn’t mean that everything is going to be alright, but Emily is looking for peace. She’s looking for a moment where she feels pure good. And I think, even at its surface level, she does get that experience.
Personally, I don’t really think people are good or bad. I think we all exist somewhere in the middle. Camp centers traditionally villainized characters, but that’s where Emily seems to find her peace, however you choose to define it.
I also wanted to show the experience of having decided that you are a bad person, you’ve made mistakes, and you feel cursed. Then when you meet other people who have done things that you would consider worse, you can actually feel good in their presence. You feel like less of a bad person. I think that’s a huge part of the story as well. Emily’s finding her version of other fucked up people, and she feels less fucked up around them. I’ve found that in my own life. It’s a cool thing. I don’t think it’s bad.
I don’t think it’s bad either. It’s finding your home, your people. We meet Emily in the aftermath of unthinkable trauma. Is this a story about mental health and healing?
Witnessing it myself. witnessing other people experience tragedy and then move through grief, you hear a lot of talk about healing or coming out the other side. There’s so much conversation around what that looks like, with self-care and showing up for yourself. I always felt really averse to it. It annoyed me. I think the beginning of the film speaks to that. The therapeutic version of what getting help looks like is obviously very different from what Camp is showing. And again, I don’t have an answer for what you’re supposed to do. But I think that’s another question I was asking: how do you heal? Do you heal at all? Is that the end goal, or are we just trying to get better? It’s something I experienced in my own grief. And the answer, for me, at least now, is just that I’m not looking to get better. So I felt like I hadn’t. I found it hard to find people to have those conversations with. And I think that’s what I ultimately wanted to make a film about.
I love that unanswered question. In my own experience, I’ve had to reframe what healing actually looks like. There’s not really an endpoint. It’s just finding a way to keep going. There’s also an element of sacrifice in this story, particularly regarding another counselor named Jo (Sophie Bawks-Smith). What role does she play in Emily’s journey?
For me, Jo is this human embodiment of Charlie, Emily’s friend. As Jo, she had a life at this camp before meeting Emily, and then was kind of taken over by Charlie’s spirit. I think a lot of people view Emily’s final choice as horrendous and tragic. In a way it is, but for me, if Jo becomes her angel, it’s almost like a self-sacrifice. Jo knows that by sacrificing herself, she’ll be giving Emily power to move forward. In the original script, the girls were supposed to bring out another counselor, JB (Aidan Laudersmith), and burn his body. But I just thought, there’s no way sacrificing this guy could give the girls enough power. There’s just no way, right? Logically, that just didn’t line up for me.
I’m glad you mentioned JB, because he has his own tragic arc. How do men factor into the world of Camp?
The way men factor into my world is so bizarre. I have such little respect for them in my films, which is something I’ve been called on. I think I have to challenge myself in the future to make a movie about a boy because, these boys … It’s not that the men in my films aren’t redeemable, but there’s no depth to these characters. They’re just treated with such disrespect. I don’t know why I do that, actually. That’s something for me to look into. It was the same with Honeycomb. They’re just such peripheral characters. I’ve had people ask about Kayne (Henri Gillespi), the scary guy at the fire, what happens to him? I just think, I don’t know. I don’t care. That’s not the point of the story.
Well, I can say after a lifetime of watching women on the periphery of the story, the course correction feels nice. In a similar vein, I’m in love with your homepage, avalonfast.com. There’s an image of girls on a film set and then a still from Honeycomb in which a blood-covered girl is screaming at the sky. And in the middle, it just says Girl Horror. It’s a really powerful statement that gives me chills. How do you define Girl Horror, and what draws you to these types of stories?
I was obsessed with the term when I started making my movies. It was something I’d come up with to kind of brand myself and describe what I was doing. Then I went through a period where I felt like it was a bit gender exclusive and didn’t interest me as much. But now I’ve come full circle on the term. I think it’s a bit of a commentary on youth and the horror of growing up female. But I think everybody can relate to that experience. I don’t want it to feel like this exclusive thing, that I make movies exclusively for girls, because I don’t think I do. I’m interested in exploring what Girl Horror means. Originally, it was just a title, something I came up with, and now it’s become something that resonates with people. You said it gave you chills. That’s cool for me to hear because there’s obviously some depth there.
Are you working on anything new?
Yes. I am actually making a movie about a boy. That’s the next thing.
That’s exciting! The more I think about feminism, the more I end up coming back to men and boys, because they have a place in the world of Girl Horror too.
Absolutely. It’s all just part of being human.
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