Exclusive: How BLACK PHONE 2 Was Influenced By THE MATRIX

Director Scott Derrickson and writer C. Robert Cargill are bringing The Grabber back from the dead with Black Phone 2. Hitting theaters later this month, the sequel to 2022’s The Black Phone is going full Freddy Krueger with Ethan Hawke’s masked killer, as he now has the ability to get you in your dreams. Separating the dream world from reality took some serious effort on the part of the filmmakers, particularly during the scripting phase. 

See also: Would Scott Derrickson Make Another SINISTER Movie? Possibly!

Fango’s own Angel Melanson had the chance to speak with Derrickson and Cargill following the premiere of Black Phone 2 at Fantastic Fest. The movie uses Super 8 film to help the audience distinguish between what is a dream and what is reality. Cargill revealed that the script was directly influenced by 1999’s The Matrix, one of the most important sci-fi movies ever made. Not that the movies are terribly similar, but when it came to writing the screenplay, there was some crossover. As Cargill explained: 

“We talked about it from the script phase. One of our touchstones was The Matrix and how they had formatted the script to make people be able to understand, which world are we in? We talked about how to try and make that work and communicate that to the reader so that people just reading the script would understand. We knew it would work on the screen because Scott really did know what he was gonna shoot but trying to figure that out on the page and make sure it made sense was its own complicated thing.