Scott Derrickson directed The Black Phone, a supernatural horror movie, in 2021. Now, its sequel is set to release, where he also serves as the filmmaker.
Now in an interview with SFX Magazine, he says, “The reason I wanted to do a high school movie was that it has more interesting emotional stakes."
He explains the sequel is more violent than the original, but he adds “It requires a different tone than a middle school coming-of-age supernatural movie."
Scott stresses the movie's mature tone despite its gore. “You just invariably are going to need to be more violent and more aggressive and maybe more shocking, to escalate aspects of the movie beyond what the first movie did, because a good portion of the audience, the teenagers who grew up really loving The Black Phone, they’re older now."
He continues, "They’re the kids who paid to see Terrifier. So there’s certainly more intensity and more gore. We were rated R, and one of the things we were rated R for was gore. There’s no gore in the first movie at all.”
“The change that you go through between middle school and high school may be one of the biggest, most dramatic changes you go through in your lifetime, and I was really interested in who these characters have become, having gone through something so extraordinary."
"I didn’t want to intensify the violence and horror to be more edgy. I was interested in being more mature, going deeper into the emotions of these characters and trying to make a movie that worked as a pair," Scott concludes.
The Black Phone 2 will bow out in cinemas on Oct 17.