The Forgotten '80s Horror Movie That Inspired Black Phone 2 Director Scott Derrickson

Horror is an enduring genre, in no small part because it tends to build on what came before through homages that can go on to become their own thing. "Black Phone 2" is very much a love letter to classic horror from the past, including taking inspiration from an oft-forgotten '80s slasher movie.

The sequel sees The Grabber seek vengeance on Finn (Mason Thames), preying on his younger sister Gwen (Madeleine McGraw) from beyond the grave while Gwen begins seeing visions of three young boys being stalked at a winter camp called Alpine Lake. She convinces Finn to visit the camp during a winter storm as they seek to solve this deadly mystery, but The Grabber is there waiting for them.

This frozen lake setting is important because, as the trailers for "Black Phone 2" revealed, we get to see Ethan Hawke's Grabber doing his thing on ice skates. This was director Scott Derrickson paying tribute to 1983's "Curtains."

"I would love to take credit for this because it is such a deep cut, but this is one of those rare instances where Scott put a very deep cut of a film in a movie that I hadn't seen," writer C. Robert Cargill said after the premiere of "Black Phone 2" at Fantastic Fest. "I was like, 'Wait a second, I have to watch this movie now.'" Derrickson had this to say about it:

"'Curtains' from 1983 which was a movie that, in the '80s, it had to have been the mid-'80s because I was still in high school, I just caught it on late night cable turning the channels and I saw the ice skating scene of the masked killer on the ice and thought it was one of the most unbelievable things I had ever seen."

"It was scary, and weird, and funny, and everything. It just seemed like it was a great thing to pull from," Derrickson added. The scene in question sees a masked killer skating across the ice en route to dispatching an unsuspecting victim. It's very unique because even though quite a few of the best horror movies ever made take place at summer camps, we rarely get winter-set deadly shenanigans.

Directed by Richard Ciupka, "Curtains" centers on six young actresses who are auditioning for a movie role at a remote mansion but are targeted by a mysterious masked murderer. In "Black Phone 2," we learn a lot more about The Grabber's past, which does indeed involve him being adept at ice skating. It's a kill that comes in handy even though he's now essentially gone full Freddy Krueger, attacking his victims in their dreams.

While Derrickson pulled directly from this obscure cult favorite, it's far from the only movie that the sequel pays tribute to. The Grabber is very much influenced by "A Nightmare on Elm Street" thanks to his ability to cheat death and kill from the afterlife. Derrickson even pulled from his own past, using Super 8 film for the dream sequences, just like the kill tapes in 2012's "Sinister." The camp setting itself calls to mind "Friday the 13th" and other slashers.

Intentional or not, Derrickson and Cargill crafted a bit of a grab bag of tributes to horror of yesteryear with their sequel to "The Black Phone." At the same time, they also managed to make a movie that stands on its own two feet, rather than feeling like a mere imitation of something else audiences once liked.

"Black Phone 2" is in theaters now.