BLACK PHONE 2 officially connects to Scott Derrickson’s secret horror universe

Director Scott Derrickson he’s never been one to chase sequels, but when he does, there’s usually more beneath the surface. His latest film, Black phone 2marks the first time he has written and directed a direct sequel to one of his projects.

The film continues the story it started with The black phonebut it turns out that it is only part of a much larger and disturbing picture that Derrickson has quietly constructed.

As it turns out, Derrickson’s “phone line to the supernatural” extends far further than fans realized. In V/H/S/85, Derrickson and longtime collaborator C. Robert Cargill created a segment titled Dreamkill, a disturbing short film about a teenager whose dreams reveal brutal murders that he somehow records on videotape. The boy’s psychic abilities seem familiar to anyone who’s seen The Black Phone, and there’s a good reason for that.

The two stories are linked by blood. Dreamkill’s teenage psychic, named Gunther Blake, is actually part of the same family as Finney and Gwen Blake from The Black Phone.

This connection makes Dreamkill canonically part of The Black Phone universe. Derrickson revealed the hidden crossover in an interview with ComicBook.com, saying:

“Oh, there’s actually a universe crossover in there, which I guess I made too subtle because no one gets it. James Ransone [as Bobby Blake] he tells Detective Wayne that, when he was behind the glass, he was talking about Gunther.

“He says, ‘She has these dreams that are prophetic.’ And he says, ‘My sister had the same gift.’ They drove her crazy and she killed herself.’ And he said, ‘Gunther’s cousin Gwen has the same thing.’ I fucking hate it.’ Well, the sister is Gwen’s mom, and Gwen is Gwen from “The Black Phone”.

This revelation means that Dreamkill, The Black Phone, and Black Phone 2 all exist in the same chilling universe, a secret horror mythology that Derrickson has been developing for years. Gunther Blake, Dreamkill’s teenage psychic, is also played by Dashiell Derrickson, the director’s real son.

In the Black phone film, brothers Finney (Mason Thames) and Gwen (Madeleine McGraw) face the serial killer known as The Grabber (Ethan Hawke) in 1978.

Gwen’s psychic dreams help save her brother, and in Black Phone 2, the supernatural threat doesn’t stop as the Grabber finds a way to haunt them from beyond the grave. Dreamkill jumps to 1985, a few years after those events, and while the names and fates of the Blakes are only hinted at, the shared psychic “gift” ties everything together.

There’s also a fascinating visual thread that runs through all three stories. In the Black Phone films, Gwen’s visions are shown as eerie Super 8 footage, a stylistic choice that helps audiences recognize when something supernatural is happening. Derrickson and Cargill first played with that idea in Dreamkill, contrasting the ghostly images of Super 8 with the gritty images of ’80s VHS tapes. Derrickson told Bloody Disgusting:

“I started out out of an interest in being able to edit the medium within the VHS with the idea of ​​finding footage to try to push the limits of what you could do. I started with the idea of ​​having Super 8 footage on a VHS tape.”

Now, it’s clear that the recurring use of Super 8 isn’t just a stylistic touch: it’s a signature of Derrickson’s horror language, a cinematic signal that something dark and otherworldly is unfolding.

And if you’ve noticed that Sinister, another Derrickson and Cargill film, also revolves around mysterious Super 8 reels that reveal supernatural evil, you might wonder the same thing horror fans wonder: Could Sinister be part of this world too?

Derrickson hasn’t confirmed this connection, but it certainly fits his growth model.

Source: ComicBook