Black Phone 2 is almost here, and it makes an insane jump for the franchise, turning the first film's serial killer, The Grabber (played by Ethan Hawke), into a fatal supernatural force preying on innocents from within their dreams—a new-age Freddy Krueger. The long-anticipated sequel made its debut at Fantastic Fest 2025, and many have been hailing it as being even better than the original movie.
Black Phone 2 director Scott Derrickson (who has a soft spot for killers in the dream world) revealed to The Direct's Russ Milheim on the film's red carpet at Fantastic Fest that The Grabber's change into an alternate Freddy Krueger "was somewhat intentional" and that it "evolved into that idea."
The Grabber and Freddy Krueger aren't the same, however. "The Grabber is a highly intelligent, articulate conversationalist," Derrickson explained, adding that "dialogue is part of his stalking" and "torture process." Those witty one-liners that Freddy Krueger always has up his sleeve are very much something unique to him.
The list of talented people we spoke to on the red carpet at Fantastic Fest 2025 includes Scott Derrickson (Director, Writer, Producer), C. Robert Cargill (Writer, Producer), Miguel Mora (Ernesto), and Anna Lore (Hope).
The film also stars Mason Thames and Madeleine McGraw, who give incredible performances. Black Phone 2 will be released in theaters on October 10.
Turning Ethan Hawke's The Grabber Into a New-Age Freddy Krueger
The Grabber Is No Longer a Normal Serial Killer
- The Direct: "I'm such a big fan of how this film escalates the concept from that first one. Can you just talk about why you chose to escalate it the way you did, and basically turn The Grabber into a new age Freddy Krueger?"
Scott Derrickson: Well, that was somewhat intentional. It sort of evolved into that idea. But you know, if you're going to make a sequel to a horror film, you can't just regurgitate the same movie and give the audience a revamped version of the original movie.
We've all seen sequels that do that; it's always unsatisfying. But you can't go too far off the path either. So the goal was to try to push it far enough without getting into ridiculous territory.
C. Robert Cargill: Well, anytime you have a horror sequel, you want to escalate it. You go back to 'Scream 2,' they laid out the rules. You know, more bodies, more blood, more scares. And so you always want to go in making something bigger than you had before...
Everyone's like, we got to make a sequel. And I was like, not until we have a great idea. If we don't have a great idea, I'm not making a second movie.
And then a week after I had said that, Joe Hill called up and said, I got the greatest idea. And so when he pitched me the idea, not only was I excited. I was like, Oh, hell yeah, I want to make this movie. But then I began to start wondering, all right, what are the most interesting things we can do with this?...
... I'm a huge 'Dream Warriors' fan, I love the 'Nightmare on Elm' series, but we don't violate our own rules to do this. So we get to play around with the space in a way that you normally can't with movies, because we set up some rules that gave us so much more to play with than we had runway to do in the first film. So, we were very excited to go in and then just make it great... Ethan was so great as The Grabber. We were like, how do we take him to the next level as a supernatural version of The Grabber? And that's where we are here.
Miguel Mora: That's kind of the reference I had in mind when I first read the script. So it's a cool thing to, you know, Freddy Krueger was an '80s hit, and it's still a huge, iconic horror villain. So it's cool to see that The Grabber is kind of going along those lines and going to become something iconic of its own.
It's definitely, I don't want to say it's the same thing as Freddy Krueger, because it's not, but it's haunting in its own way. It's terrifying in its own way. And the director and writer, I mean, Cargill and Scott Derrickson, both did such a great job in writing this story and creating this iconic villain, and I can't wait for the world to see it.
- The Direct: "When it comes to The Grabber, obviously, that comparison to Freddy Krueger is a quick one to make. But what do you think are the key differences between those two figures?"
Scott Derrickson: Well, the biggest one is, you know, The Grabber is a highly intelligent, articulate conversationalist. He likes to talk. That's what he does. And dialogue is part of his stalking. It's part of his torture process. And so if the role didn't involve—if it just involved quippy one-liners like Freddy Krueger, I don't think Ethan Hawke would be playing that role.
Miguel Mora: I think there's more of a personal connection to The Grabber haunting the characters that he haunts. Freddy Krueger, in that sense, is different. So this one, it's vengeance. It's about getting your payback for 'Black Phone 2.'. So I'm going to say in that sense, they're very different characters with two different goals.
Anna Lore: I think that he's completely different in that he's got entirely different motivations. First of all, it's a personal vendetta. And also, I think the rules are slightly different, but it's definitely like, I think there's the chilling aspect of, it happens in a dream that can happen in real life. That's definitely very scary.
How Black Phone 2 Utilizes a Harsh New Location
The Snowy Winter Camps In Colorado Take Center Stage.
- The Direct: "I want to also talk about the environments in these movies. They're so important to the story. The first one kind of has that soul sucking basement that you spend so much time in, and this one turns its attention to the cold, harsh environment. How does that change of scenery kind of affect what you wanted to do with this film?"
Scott Derrickson: I actually started with it with the scenery. You know, I grew up in North Denver, so the first movie was really capturing that time and place when I was 12 in 1978 North Denver. And I thought that my experiences as a teenager at winter camps in Colorado were really fascinating, [and a] really interesting time and place in the 80s to be going to these camps.
And, you know, it's a camp movie in the 80s with a killer running amok. Of course, 'The Shining' is a winter movie that takes place in the Rocky Mountains from 1980, so I just felt like that idea was allowing the movie to participate in a pretty great tradition of horror films.
C. Robert Cargill: Scott wanted to make a movie about his childhood... A lot of the stuff in the first act of the first film is autobiographical for Scott. There's a little me woven in there, here and there, of experiences I had as a teenager. But we wanted to kind of root it in that...
One of the things was that he went to winter camp every year, and he lived in Colorado, and snow was a big part of it. And my family's from upstate New York. So snow is a big part of my life, even though I'm a permanent Texan now. And so he was like, let's make our snow movie...
Then it became, What set pieces can we write? How can we use that? What scares can we get out of it? A lot of movies don't do it in the snow. We were so insistent on it being real that we shot in Canada in winter. I love that. I'm seeing people going, Oh, that shot looks so fake, and it's like real snow. Yeah, we didn't fake that snow.
There are a few shots that you have to do things for VFX and things, but in terms of this, that's all real snow, and we were really freezing our balls off... It got down to negative four one day while shooting that film. We had to shut down due to the weather, but the look is so great. Seeing it on the big screen, it just looks big and beautiful. And I'm so glad I got to make my snow movie.
The entire red carpet interviews can be seen below:
Another horror movie that screened at Fantastic Fest 2025 was The Strangers: Chapter 2, a series that's star, Madelaine Petsch, promised wouldn't ruin its titular villains.
