When it comes to horror movies, fans love to figure out where their favorite films fit. That’s why movies like *The Black Phone* and its sequel, this month’s *Black Phone 2*, can spark engaging debate—or even irritation—depending on your personality and taste.
These films don’t neatly fit into a pre-fabricated subgenre category. They combine elements of the serial killer thriller, supernatural horror, and the slasher genre, meaning they don’t align perfectly with any single subgenre. Consequently, those who label *Black Phone 2* strictly as a slasher film often feel frustrated. This is especially true given that the *Nightmare on Elm Street* series—a clear influence on the sequel—is generally regarded as a hallmark slasher franchise.
The primary criticism aimed at *Black Phone 2* is that, unlike most slasher films, no one dies on screen. All the murders referenced in the movie occurred prior to the events depicted. For many fans, this unique quality is what makes *Black Phone 2* feel fresh and inspired. However, it was a point of contention during production.
Director and co-writer Scott Derrickson and co-writer C. Robert Cargill were adamant from the start: they wanted to make a scary movie with no on-screen deaths. Nevertheless, one studio executive did propose a change. As Jacob Hall learned during a recent chat with Cargill on the /Film Weekly Podcast, the character who nearly got killed off was Barbara (played by Maev Beaty)—someone who, in a typical slasher, would almost certainly be the first to go.
Despite that, Cargill and Derrickson stuck to their vision, allowing *Black Phone 2* to continue defying expectations.
### Inspiration Behind the No-Kill Approach
The filmmakers’ choice to avoid on-screen deaths wasn’t arbitrary. They drew inspiration from the 1980 film *The Changeling*. Primarily a ghost story, it was not designed to be a horror movie with a high body count, yet it remains one of the most chilling horror films ever made.
Cargill explained to /Film:
> “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 conscious of not teasing the audience too much or causing frustration. Given how *Black Phone 2* is set up like an *Elm Street*-style slasher—with the Grabber (Ethan Hawke) now able to attack victims in the real world from beyond the grave—the filmmakers had to carefully pace who would be attacked and how often.
As Cargill noted:
> “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.”
### Crafting a Scary Movie Without a Body Count
This intention to make a scary film without kill scenes resulted in *Black Phone 2* being a substantial film that didn’t need a body count to stay engaging. In fact, Cargill and Derrickson encountered the opposite problem.
Cargill shared:
> “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.”
### Facing Industry Pressure
The bait-and-switch nature of *Black Phone 2*—a film about an undead serial killer who doesn’t kill on-screen—eventually caused some tension during production. That unnamed executive’s suggestion to kill off Barbara stemmed from the perception that her character was an easy target, given her closed-minded personality.
However, Cargill confirmed that no version of the script ever 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.”
### Audience Reception
The film’s box office success proves this bold choice hardly deterred audiences from showing up to see the Grabber be genuinely frightening and menacing. Ethan Hawke’s unsettling performance as the Grabber is enough to establish him as a true threat, meaning neither the character nor *Black Phone 2* requires a traditional body count to be effective.
https://www.slashfilm.com/2005758/black-phone-2-character-death-studio-note-writer-c-robert-cargill/