The Black Phone Director's Traumatic Past Inspired the Horror Film - IGN - IGN

The Black Phone is the new film from director Scott Derrickson and Blumhouse Productions that stars Ethan Hawke as a kidnapper known as The Grabber.

The story was adapted from Joe Hill’s short story “The Black Phone,” and it follows a 13-year-old boy named Finney (Mason Thames) who was kidnapped by The Grabber and locked in his basement.

The Black Phone is a supernatural horror story, but it is one that aims to be grounded in a way that makes moviegoers believe at least part of the story is something that could actually happen.

“There wasn't anything that I was torn about,” Derrickson said, regarding making changes to the story.

“Also, the sister character is an older character in the short story and doesn't really do much,” Derrickson said of Madeleine McGraw’s Gwen.

For Derrickson, his journey to bring The Black Phone to theaters was also a very personal one, as the film is a combination of the one told by Joe Hill and a retelling of sorts of certain traumatic events Derrickson endured as a child.

The Black Phone features a cast that is led by children.

Derrickson also talked about The Black Phone being a “coming-of-age film that is interrupted by this horror story” and why focusing on kids in these stories makes them hit so much closer to home than they would otherwise.

The Black Phone chose to walk that tightrope, and that challenge is something Derrickson has been dealing with his whole career with films like The Exorcism of Emily Rose, Sinister, and even the first Doctor Strange.

“My general approach is the more that I can ground something in actual reality, the more that I can make an audience feel like characters in an environment are realistic, the more they are willing to accept the realism of the paranormal or the supernatural when you start to introduce it,” Derrickson said.

At its core, The Black Phone is a story that could, unfortunately, happen to any of us.

Sure, the talking ghosts may be a stretch, but the story of a father and his children could make sense to many people, horror fan or not.

Another strength of The Black Phone, and many other horror movies for that matter, is the power of the unknown.

“One of the reasons that I think horror films and scary stories are always so dynamic for us is that there's an aspect of our life that is always unknown,” Hawke said.

Ethan Hawke plays the antagonist in The Black Phone, and his choice to take on the role of The Grabber was a bit out of the ordinary for him?

“One of the reasons why I never like playing villains, just horrible people, is you don't really like inviting that kind of madness and that darkness into your psyche,” Hawke said.

The Grabber doesn’t get much in the way of exposition describing his past and how he came to be this sadistic kidnapper, but Hawke did share a story of how Derrickson used a quote from Bob Dylan to help define who the character was.

The Black Phone is now in theaters

For more, be sure to check out our review, why Ethan Hawke says making horror movies is like solving a “geometry problem,” and our choices for the top 25 best horror movies of all time