The Black Phone is performing exceptionally well at the box-office and received positive reviews from both critics and audience alike with RT scores of 84% and 90% respectively. The director Scott Derrickson has shared details about the film in a recent interview and he made a small change to the ending including the child protagonist. The Black Phone is based on a short story of the same name written by Joe Hill.
WARNING: The following section contains mild spoilers for the film.
Ending of The Black Phone
Making a dark horror film about a sadistic child killer is a difficult endeavor to start with and Scott Derrickson who directed and co-wrote the script with Robert C. Cargill (the duo previously worked on the cult horror film Sinister) reveals the last minute change he made at the end of the film.nIn the final scenes of the film, the character Robin, a former victim of the child killer and who’s speaking with Finney through the disconnected black phone shows up as a ghost. It’s not part of Derrickson’s initial plans for the ending and the child actor who plays Robin had already flown home.
The director said the following about the changed ending.
“In the script, Robin wasn’t in the room. It was just a phone call. A day or two before we shot that … it suddenly hit me out of nowhere. I was like, ‘Oh, the audience wants to see that kid again. We got to see him again. It’s not going feel right if we don’t see him again.’ I was like, ‘Where’s that kid?’ and they were like, ‘We just flew him home.’ I was like, ‘Get him back. You got to fly him back.'”
Derrickson has also revealed how he ended up filming the whole scene in one shot without prior planning and preparation on how to direct Robin and Finney coming face-to-face.
“I end up doing it all in one shot. I think a good director always has an antenna up trying to hear what this movie really wants to be. If you do that, you can sometimes make decisions that are bigger than you.”
The Black Phone’s success might also spawn a potential sequel, as Derrickson had also said The Black Phone’s original short story Joe Hill had pitched a wonderful idea to him.
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