This Black Phone 2 Character Could've Died Thanks To A Studio Note [Exclusive]

When it comes to horror movies, fans love to figure out where their favorite films fit. Which is why movies like "The Black Phone" and its sequel, this month's "Black Phone 2," can provide some engaging debate or some irritation, depending on your personality and taste. That's because the films don't neatly fit into a pre-fabricated subgenre category; they contain elements of the serial killer thriller, the supernatural horror film, and the slasher, meaning they don't neatly fit into any of those subgenres. Thus, those who call "Black Phone 2" a slasher film by default feel frustrated by the movie, especially given the fact that the "Nightmare on Elm Street" movies, being generally regarded as a slasher series, are a clear influence on the sequel. Their number one criticism against "Black Phone 2" is that, unlike the majority of other slasher films, no one in it dies; all the murders in it have taken place before the events of the film.

While this unique quality is what helps "Black Phone 2" feel inspired for those of us who enjoy the film, it certainly was a point of contention that arose while making the movie. Director/co-writer Scott Derrickson and co-writer C. Robert Cargill were adamant from the start that they wanted to make a scary movie where there were no on-screen deaths. Yet one studio executive had a note that could've led to that concept being changed.

As Jacob Hall learned during a recent chat with Cargill for the /Film Weekly Podcast, the character who almost found themselves getting offed in the movie was Barbara (Maev Beaty), someone who, in a standard slasher movie, would absolutely be first on the chopping block. However, Cargill and Derrickson stuck to their guns, allowing "Black Phone 2" to continue to defy expectations.

The filmmakers' interest in not killing any characters on screen during "Black Phone 2" wasn't an arbitrary choice. Instead, the duo was inspired by 1980's "The Changeling." While primarily a ghost story and never expected to be a horror movie with a heavy body count, it remains one of the most chilling horror films ever made. As Cargill explained to /Film, he and Derrickson were interested in experimenting with a similar tone for "Black Phone 2":

"One of me and Scott's favorite ghost stories of all time is 'The Changeling,' and that is an absolute low body count movie, but it's terrifying...So we knew we didn't have to kill people to make people scared. We also knew that people would assume they were in danger, so just by the very aspect of having them there, if we made them interesting enough, if we made them likable enough, people would care about whether they lived or died."

Both Cargill and Derrickson were aware that they couldn't tease the audience too much to the point of frustration. Especially given how "Black Phone 2" is set up like an "Elm Street"-style slasher, with the Grabber (Ethan Hawke) now having the ability to attack people in the real world from the beyond. Thus, the filmmakers had to be choosy with their pacing in terms of which character(s) would get attacked and how many times, as Cargill said:

"It did kind of hamstring us in that we couldn't keep faking the audience out. We couldn't keep putting people in danger and pulling them out of danger with nobody getting hurt. So it did give us a limited number of times we could get away with that kind of buildup."

Intending to make a scary movie without kill scenes allowed "Black Phone 2" to be a meaty film that didn't require a body count to stay engaging. In fact, Cargill and Derrickson discovered they had the opposite problem. As Cargill explained:

"There were discussions later about killing characters, but we always ... found we were cutting out character scenes, we were cutting out deeper pushes into mythology. We just didn't have the space for it, and also we had the scares that didn't need it. So we were able to connect with audiences and scare the crap out of them without having to have a body count."

The bait-and-switch aspect of "Black Phone 2," which is a film about an undead serial killer who doesn't do any killing on-screen, did eventually chafe during the filmmaking process, as with that unnamed executive who proposed adding the death of Barbara. Her character is an easy target considering how closed-minded she is. Yet Cargill confirmed that no version of the film's script included a death scene for any main character:

"There was an ask from an exec at some point, it was like, 'Can we just at least kill the b****y Christian character?', which is the one that everybody's like, 'She was the one that was going to die, right?' But no, we had never killed any of these characters in any of the drafts."

As the film's box office reception proves, this choice hardly deterred audiences from showing up to see the Grabber be frightening and menacing. Hawke's performance as the character is unsettling enough to make him a genuine threat, meaning neither the Grabber nor "Black Phone 2" requires a body count to be effective.