Black Phone 2 director Scott Derrickson shares horror film that 'unnerved' him for days
Black Phone 2 director Scott Derrickson has revealed the one horror film that left him "unnerved for days".
Black Phone 2 director Scott Derrickson says The Witch is the horror film that scared him the most as it left "unnerved" for days.
The 59-year-old filmmaker has made his name in the horror genre, beginning his career with Urban Legends: Final Cut and then going on to make movies like The Exorcism of Emily Rose, Sinister, Deliver Us from Evil and The Black Phone and its 2025 sequel.
Derrickson is an avid watcher of other horror films and he admits that Robert Eggers' 2015 folk fright fest The Witch - which starred Anya Taylor-Joy as a girl corrupted by the Devil - left a lasting impression on him.
Stephen Cognetti's found footage film Hell House LLC also terrified Derrickson.
In an interview with Dread Central he was asked what horror movie genuinely scared him, to which he replied: "Probably Hell House LLC and Hell House LLC II. They really got to me. What scares me is when something feels grounded and real - when you believe in the characters and the environment, and then the unknown intrudes in aggressive ways. That’s terrifying to me.
"The Witch. That one unnerved me for days. Hell House LLC, I shook off pretty quickly, but The Witch made me feel contaminated, like I couldn’t shake the evil off. Those are probably the two most effective horror films I’ve seen in the last 10 or 15 years."
Derrickson - who reunited with Ethan Hawke, Mason Thames and Madelaine McGraw on Black Phone 2 - believes horror is in a great place at the moment and directors are creating important films that just happen to also be horror stories.
The director compared the horror films being made in Hollywood to the movies coming out of Italy in the 1970s from directors like Dario Argento who was responsible for The Bird with the Crystal Plumage and Suspiria.
He said: "When you look at films like Hereditary, It Follows, The Witch, Weapons and Sinners, these are great pieces of cinema that also happen to be great horror films. We’re in a moment now that feels similar to what Italy experienced in the ’70s. Horror is being embraced by serious auteurs, and that wasn’t always the case. In the past, some of our greatest horror films were one-offs from non-genre filmmakers, The Exorcist, The Omen, Rosemary’s Baby. Now, horror is the destination."
