Sinister and The Black Phone Did Not Seem Scary on Paper
Screenwriter C. Robert Cargill says sound, camerawork, mood, and acting did the frightening.
Last Podcast On The Left · Last Interview on the Left: Midnight Radio w/ Ethan Hawke & C. Robert CargillAfter turning in the first draft of Sinister, screenwriter C. Robert Cargill said he and his collaborators were convinced it was not a very scary movie. They talked about how they could punch it up.
He said a similar doubt came up ahead of the release of The Black Phone. People debated at length whether to describe it as a paranormal thriller, since the feeling was that it was not really horror scary.
Then the movie was released, Cargill said, and it scared viewers far more than expected.
His framing was that material that is not scary on the page can be punched up later. He named sound, camerawork, mood, and acting as the tools that can do it.
The reverse is very hard, he said. Just because something is written as scary on the page, it will not work without all those elements.
That was his experience on these two films. What looked flat in the draft played as frightening once those other pieces were added.
Questions people ask
Why discuss calling The Black Phone a paranormal thriller?
The label can signal what kind of fear an audience should expect. In the discussion Cargill described, the concern was that The Black Phone did not feel horror scary on paper. A different label might have been a way to match that expectation.