Movies
How ‘The Black Phone’ Author Joe Hill Inspired Scott Derrickson to Make ‘Black Phone 2’
Director/co-writer Scott Derrickson has publicly credited The Black Phone author Joe Hill with sparking the idea for Black Phone 2, but he remained tight-lipped as to what exactly the concept entailed.
In his audio commentary that accompanies the sequel on home video, Derrickson opens up about how a reveal that recontextualizes the original film drew him to the sequel.
“The first film was very successful, and people immediately wanted me to make a sequel. The studio called, I think, the Monday after the box office weekend. The opening numbers came in, and it was a hit, and they wanted to know if I’d make a second one,” Derrickson recalls.
“I was not terribly interested in the idea at first, and Joe Hill sent me an email with an idea about The Grabber calling Finn and a backstory that involved him being the killer of Gwen and Finn’s mother. That latter part was something I had never thought about,” he explains.
“I had thought about making a sequel where The Grabber’s the ghost. That was interesting but not enough to make me want to do the movie,” Derrickson continues. “But the backstory about the mother was really fascinating to me and I thought could really allow for the creation of some interesting emotional arcs for these two kids.”
He adds, “Once I glommed onto that idea, then what hit me and really made me ultimately decide to make a sequel to The Black Phone was the realization that if I didn’t make a sequel right away the way the studio wanted me to and instead waited for three years, Madeleine McGraw and Mason Thames would be in high school. They would be old enough to play high school kids, and that makes it a very different kind of movie.”
When the scene with the mother comes up, Derrickson expands on its impact.
“I thought [Hill’s idea] could be very powerful as a reveal for audiences who loved the first one — to find out that this traumatic event that wrecked the life of Terrance and disrupted the household of Finn and Gwen, to find out that that was actually not true. She didn’t kill herself. I thought that had some staying power.”
Black Phone 2 is available now on 4K Ultra HD, Blu-ray, DVD, and Digital.
Judging from the unprecedented box office success of Kane Parsons’ Backrooms adaptation, you’ve likely already seen the liminal horror hit that managed to make audiences afraid of empty hallways and bad wallpaper. And now that so many of us have already entered the yellow labyrinth (some of us more than once), the time has come to discuss the spoiler-filled details that make the movie so fascinating in the first place.
And if there’s one element here that makes the Backrooms movie stand out from any previous lore/mythology, it has to be the genius addition of the Still Life entities. Warped recreations of real people that somehow wandered into the Complex, these misremembered creatures are responsible for some of the most disturbing imagery of 2026 – as well as laugh-out-loud memes created by one of the film’s very own concept artists.
However, true to Parsons’ word that the movie would rely heavily on practical effects, each of these distorted monsters was brought to life by real actors under heavy layers of makeup and prosthetics (with the occasional splash of CGI enhancements). While Anora and If I Had Legs I’d Kick You actress Ivy Wolk wasn’t among these performers, despite what Letterboxd might have you believe, the creature cast did benefit from veteran players with plenty of genre experience.
For starters, Alien: Romulus alumni Robert Bobroczkyi (who previously brought that film’s horrific Offspring to life during its most memorable sequence) plays the flick’s main antagonist, the Still Life version of Captain Clark. And though there was some obvious CGI involved in making the character’s peg-leg and nightmarish face more believable, Bobroczkyi’s monstrous performance and his natural 7’7″ frame helped to make that final chase sequence a clear highlight among this year’s genre offerings.
The film’s Texas-Chain-Saw-inspired “dinner” scene also features a freaky collection of less-aggressive Still Life creatures in the form of the Bearded Man, the Red-Headed Woman and, strangest of them all, the cheekily named “Archibald Leland Sutter Still Life” (who earned this title among fans and crewmembers as a reference to his apparent affinity for lamps).
While this was the first major horror outing for both Patrick Baynham (The Bearded Man) and Dana Mahmood (Archibald), Rhiannon Roberts has worked as a stunt performer in everything from Yellowjackets to HBO’s The Last of Us adaptation – which is probably why The Red-Headed Woman is the most active out of Clark’s impromptu “family.” That being said, the Archibald Leland Sutter Still Life is my personal favorite of the bunch simply because his anachronistic outfit suggests that the Backrooms phenomenon might be a lot older than the Async Foundation. I also love how hard he tries to be helpful with that little light of his!
That might be it for the Still Life entities, but I think horror fans will also be pleased to hear that the film’s Found Footage prologue stars none other than Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City star Avan Jogia as Naren Warne – and American Mary herself Katharine Isabelle also shows up in a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it cameo at Mary’s house party towards the middle of the story (though I have a feeling that she originally had a bigger part that was likely cut for time).
At the end of the day, Parsons’ Backrooms may have been an auteur-driven project motivated by the young director’s unique take on the classic creepypasta, but film has always been a collective artform, so it’s fun to see just how many talented performers it takes to bring this kind of supernatural nightmare to life in a way that connects with so many people.
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