This article appears in the new issue of DEN OF GEEK magazine. You can read all of our magazine stories here.What if your worst nightmare just kept coming back? Universal Pictures and Blumhouse Productions are doing everything in their power to turn Ethan Hawke’s Black Phone slasher The Grabber into a bona fide horror icon. The masked killer is becoming a staple of Universal Orlando’s Halloween Horror Nights, his unnerving grin adorns cans of Fanta, and now he’s headlining the inevitable second movie. cnx.cmd.push(function() {cnx({playerId: "106e33c0-3911-473c-b599-b1426db57530",}).render("0270c398a82f44f49c23c16122516796");});The snowbound sequel, Black Phone 2, brings a terrifying new dimension to the 2021 sleeper hit based on the short horror story by Joe Hill. The whole gang is back, including director Scott Derrickson and his co-writer C. Robert Cargill, as well as stars Mason Thames and Madeleine McGraw (whose young characters are now going through high school growing pains). And yes, Ethan Hawke dons The Grabber’s mask once more, becoming a dream-haunting supernatural killer in the Freddy Krueger tradition. Derrickson, who began his directorial career with Hellraiser: Inferno, then later helmed Doctor Strange for Marvel, had “no thoughts about making a sequel” while shooting the 2021 original, but toward the end of production, Hill came up with the kernel for a continuation that the filmmaker “never would have thought of.” It got the ball rolling toward something truly sinister…Were there times when you and Cargill were writing the script for Black Phone 2 and thought, “This or that’s cool, but it doesn’t feel like Black Phone anymore?”No, I don’t think I felt that way at all in the process of it. Doing a sequel, you have to strike a balance between keeping elements of the original that audiences are going to want to return to, which, in this case, is really the characters and the Grabber. In terms of evolving it, you don’t want to make it entirely different. The biggest choice I made was waiting for a couple years to pass so the kids would be older.Making a high school horror film demanded something more impactful, more violent, and an evolution of the kind of film that the first movie was, but sticking to a certain point of view. There are a lot of emotional similarities between the two movies. Ethan saw it, then said, “I think this elevates the first movie.” Coming from him, that’s about as high praise as I could get.In terms of expanding this world, do you see these two films as bookends, or is Ethan Hawke playing the Grabber until he’s 90?I was never trying to strike out and create a franchise. Film franchises can be really fun and exciting, but I, as a filmmaker, can only do one film at a time. I did not feel obliged to make a sequel. I believed that I could make something really interesting, that was a proper evolution of what the first movie was, but not the same movie—not a regurgitation, just giving people the same kind of film. I don’t have any story ideas for a third one. I might think about that later, but not yet.The Grabber is such a ready-made horror icon in the Freddy mold. How do you make a character like that indelible?You have to trust your own instincts about what’s going to be interesting and entertaining, and to some degree, scary. And I think the mask is a really good example of that. We worked really hard on that mask in the first one, and it seemed like the most fundamental iconography from the first movie to hold on to.Finn ended the last movie somewhat elated and socially elevated, but four years later, all that is gone, and he’s isolated again. How do you take the character to these dark places without negating the triumph of the first film?If you’re going to pick up these characters three or four years later—the first movie was set in 1978, this one in 1982—you can do it. You can use movie sensibility and not take it seriously at all. There doesn’t have to be any emotional effect from those events, but I feel like what happened to these kids would have a real impact on them.It would be something that would take a lot of years to deal with. That was an interesting place to start: “What kind of effect did those events have on their lives?” People come out victorious from situations that are really terrifying, but sometimes it affects them for years to come.Although Finn was very much the focus of the last movie, the second one feels more like his sister’s movie. Gwen (Madeleine McGraw) has this big emotional arc. Did you question whether the audience would go along with that shift? To a degree, it’s true what you’re saying, but they’re both in pretty much every sequence. It’s more about switching the primary point of view. The central thing in the [first] movie was their relationship, and that was something that had real power. There had been a lot accomplished in the first film, establishing and building that relationship, so carrying that on was really interesting to me.In terms of her having more focus than she had in the first movie, I definitely was interested in doing that. She was a surprisingly beloved character, and she’s such a good actress, a big emotional engine in such a little person. That was something worth exploring more.Jason Blum has said that Blumhouse always puts a little more into sequels or IP stuff. Was Black Phone 2 different in terms of “more money, more problems?” That’s always true with a movie. I was fortunate with both Black Phone and Sinister at Blumhouse, in that they were pretty small movies, off-the-radar, and they just left me alone. On this one, there was more involvement from Universal than Blumhouse, because there’s a lot more at stake. We did spend more money, but that’s also normal.I also really like working for Universal and Peter Cramer. Having a little bit more of a creative back and forth, talking about scenes, and getting notes was to the benefit of the movie. Universal gives good notes and never forced me to do anything, ever. I talk through what I think is a good idea and what’s a bad idea, and it helps the creative process. I don’t think the first Black Phone was a big enough movie to really merit anyone’s time, but now there’s a lot more money being spent. There’s a lot more marketing money that will be spent. I welcome them wanting to be a little more involved in their investment.Black Phone 2 opens in theaters Oct. 17.The post Black Phone 2: Scott Derrickson Answers the Call of Evil appeared first on Den of Geek.