BLACK PHONE 2 Officially Connects to Scott Derrickson’s Secret Horror Universe

Director Scott Derrickson has never been the type to chase sequels, but when he does, there’s usually more going on beneath the surface. His latest film, Black Phone 2, marks his first time writing and directing a direct sequel to one of his own projects.

The movie continues the story he began with The Black Phone, but it turns out, that’s just part of a much bigger, eerier picture Derrickson’s been quietly building.

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

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

That 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 it too subtle because nobody’s picking it up. James Ransone [as Bobby Blake] tells Detective Wayne, when he’s behind the glass, he was talking about Gunther.

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

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

In the Black Phone films, siblings 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—The Grabber finds a way to haunt them from beyond the grave. Dreamkill jumps ahead to 1985, a few years after those events, and while the Blakes’ names and fates 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 movies, Gwen’s visions are shown as eerie Super 8 film 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 Super 8 images with gritty 1980s VHS tape visuals. Derrickson told Bloody Disgusting:

“I started out of interest of being able to mess with the medium within the VHS found footage idea to try to push the boundaries of what could be done. I started with the idea of having Super 8 film footage on a VHS tape.”

Now, it’s clear that the recurring use of Super 8 isn’t just a stylistic flourish—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 be wondering the same thing horror fans are: could Sinister be part of this world too?

Derrickson hasn’t confirmed that connection, but it certainly fits his growing pattern.

Source: ComicBook