We may live in a world where mobile devices are standard, but over in the 1980s timeline of Scott Derickson’s Black Phone 2, one doesn’t always need wires, cell towers, or any power at all for phone calls to go through. So it goes for Finney and Gwen Blake, who once again find themselves wrapped up in a supernatural fright fest spawned by Ethan Hawke’s kidnapper-turned-spectre The Grabber. But just because it’s happening again doesn’t mean audiences should expect a similar story, because Derrickson utilized a different bag of tricks here.
Scott Derrickson talked to SFX on CinemaBlend about going back to bat for the second sequel of his career thus far — the first being his directorial debut, 2000’s Hellraiser: Inferno — with a pronounced focus on not just repeating the same elements that made the first film so effective. For instance, he and screenwriter C. Robert Cargill chose to transition The Grabber from a corporeal monster into a supernatural nightmare, making the upcoming Blumhouse movie that much more unpredictable, while also allowing for a larger scope. As the director put it:
