This Black Phone 2 character could have died thanks to a studio note [Exclusive]

When it comes to horror movies, fans love to know where their favorite films stand. That’s why films like “The Black Phone” and its sequel, this month’s “Black Phone 2,” can spark engaging debate or some irritation, depending on your personality and tastes. This is because the films don’t fit neatly into a prefabricated subgenre category; they contain elements of the serial killer thriller, supernatural horror film, and slasher, meaning they don’t fit neatly into any of these subgenres. So, those who default to calling “Black Phone 2” a slasher film feel frustrated by the film, especially since the “Nightmare on Elm Street” films, generally considered a slasher series, have a clear influence on the sequel. Their main criticism of “Black Phone 2” is that, unlike the majority of other slasher films, no one dies; all the murders took place before the events of the film.

While this unique quality is what helps “Black Phone 2” feel inspired for those of us who enjoy the film, it’s certainly a point of contention that arose during the making of the film. Director/co-writer Scott Derrickson and co-writer C. Robert Cargill insisted from the start that they wanted to make a horror film without on-screen deaths. However, a studio executive had a note that could have led to modifying this concept.

As Jacob Hall learned in a recent conversation with Cargill for the /Film Weekly Podcast, the character who almost found himself offended in the film was Barbara (Maev Beaty), someone who, in a standard slasher film, would absolutely be first on the chopping block. However, Cargill and Derrickson stuck to their guns, allowing “Black Phone 2” to continue to defy expectations.

The filmmakers’ interest in not killing off any characters on screen during “Black Phone 2” was not an arbitrary choice. Instead, the duo took inspiration from 1980’s “The Changeling.” Although it’s primarily a ghost story and one would never expect it to be a horror film with a large body count, it remains one of the scariest horror films ever made. As Cargill explained to /Film, he and Derrickson wanted to experiment with a similar tone for “Black Phone 2”:

“One of my favorite ghost stories of all time, Scott and I’s, is ‘The Changeling,’ and it’s a very low body count movie, but it’s terrifying… So we knew we didn’t need to kill people to scare them. We also knew that people would assume they were in danger, so just by having them there, if we made them interesting enough, if we made them enough friendly, people would care if they live or die. “

Cargill and Derrickson were aware that they couldn’t tease the audience so much that it frustrated them. Especially considering how “Black Phone 2” is set up as an “Elm Street”-style slasher, with the Grabber (Ethan Hawke) now having the ability to attack people in the real world from the afterlife. So the filmmakers had to be careful with their pacing in terms of which character(s) would be attacked and how many times, as Cargill said:

“It kind of crippled us in that we couldn’t keep faking the audience. We couldn’t keep putting people in danger and getting them out of danger without anyone getting hurt. So that gave us a limited number of times where we could get away with that kind of buildup.”

The intention of making a horror film without murder scenes allowed “Black Phone 2” to be a meaty film that didn’t require a body count to remain engaging. In fact, Cargill and Derrickson found they faced the opposite problem. As Cargill explained:

“There were discussions later about killing off characters, but we always…found that we were cutting out character scenes, we were cutting out deeper thrusts into the mythology. We just didn’t have the space for that, and we also had scares that didn’t need it. So we were able to connect with the audience and scare them without having to count bodies.”

The bait-and-switch aspect of “Black Phone 2,” which is a movie about an undead serial killer who doesn’t commit any murders on screen, ended up chafing during the filmmaking process, like with that unnamed executive who suggested adding Barbara’s death. His character is an easy target given his closed mind. However, Cargill confirmed that no version of the film’s script included a death scene for a main character:

“There was a request from an executive at one point, it was like, ‘Can we at least kill off this damn Christian character?’ But no, we never killed any of these characters in any version. »

As the film’s reception at the box office proves, this choice did little to deter audiences from showing up to see the creepy and menacing Grabber. Hawke’s performance as the character is unsettling enough to make him a real threat, meaning neither the Grabber nor “Black Phone 2” requires a body count to be effective.