When the trailers for “Black Phone 2” first came out, it immediately became clear that Scott Derrickson and C. Robert Cargill were stepping up to return to familiar territory. The sequel delves deeper into The Grabber’s knotty history, exposing past transgressions, unsolved murders, and the supernatural to expand their world into something far greater than what came before. Narratively, the film also raises the stakes by showing The Grabber as an entity capable of continuing to intimidate siblings Blake, Finney and Gwen, from beyond the grave. To further emphasize this metamorphosis, “Black Phone 2” uses the eerie brightness of snowy landscapes at night to wash the world in deep blues and muted tones, imbuing the cold, haunted environment with a sense of desolate beauty.
But it’s when the film shifts between the polished cinematic polish of Camp Alpine Lake and the raw, gritty side of a Super 8 film to present the dreamlike realm where The Grabber terrorizes Gwen that the film turns into a waking nightmare. There’s something deeply unsettling about the way the film blends contemporary clarity with vintage deterioration, with the Super 8 footage bleeding into the narrative like remnants of corrupted memory. Pär M. Ekberg’s cinematography makes the film feel like it’s being infected before our eyes, evoking a similar sensation to Derrickson and Cargill’s home movies in “Sinister.”
There’s something perversely beautiful about the way Derrickson and his team transform trauma into texture: the bitter cold of the real world is drained of color, while the feverish hauntings of the dream realm pulse with life. The hell that comes to Earth in “Black Phone 2” is palpable as the texture of Super 8 elicits a visceral reaction…and it was all done practically.
Black Phone 2 embraces the horror of Super 8
Much like DC Studios frontman James Gunn, screenwriter C. Robert Cargill is pretty accessible on social media for someone who writes big movies. Fans turned to Bluesky to ask Cargill for behind-the-scenes information on “Black Phone 2,” including one person who asked how they made the Super 8 footage for the film. “No digital trickery in this. All footage that looks like film is,” Cargill posted. It turns out they used Super 8 proper for the scenes without sound, and Super 16 for the moments with dialogue, which were then cut in half to make 8mm. This means that moments shot on Super 16mm were framed with half the frame, then blown up for even more of a grainy look – practical, classic old-fashioned cinema.
/Film also attended the Q&A session after the film’s premiere at Fantastic Fest, where Derrickson expanded on this point, saying, “Everything you see up there is real film. There’s nothing up there that’s digital photography made to look like film.” Derrickson explained that the team was “very dedicated” to making sure the scenes shot on film were the best they could be. “I just feel like it’s beautiful — it’s not just a love for cinema, it’s a love specifically for the carefreeness of Super 8,” Derrickson said. “You get aberrations. Strange things happen, strange flares.” This strangeness only enhances the otherworldly quality of “Black Phone 2,” helping to immerse audiences in the abject horror of what The Grabber has planned.
Super 8 helped shape one of Scott Derrickson’s favorite scenes
Even though many filmmakers have used digital effects to try to replicate the look of Super 8, there’s always something a little artificial that takes you out of the immersion. No matter how much technology advances, nothing replaces reality. I spoke with Maggie Levin, second unit director of “Black Phone 2,” who informed me that “Super 16 was not always made for sound, but also to allow for a more dynamic lens.” The team used an identical stock for both camera types, then framed for a centered 8mm extraction on the 16mm.
The Super 8 and Super 16 cameras are also quite unique, and the team was constantly running the cameras which were freezing due to the cold. “It was 6 degrees one night, so the camera was literally freezing and couldn’t achieve a consistent speed,” Levin told me. “Which seemed even scarier when we printed the film.” But that wasn’t going to stop the creative team from pursuing what they knew was the best way to display the dreamscape.
“It feels dreamlike to me, and I always thought Super 8 was transgressive,” Derrickson said during the Q&A session. “I always said that if you found Super 8 films in your grandmother’s closet and a projector and you turned them on, you would feel weird, because there’s something about that medium, so the idea of letting the language of the dream world be entirely captured by Super 8 was technically very difficult and very difficult to achieve, but it was definitely worth it, I think.”
“Black Phone 2” is now playing in theaters around the world.
