The Black Phone director Scott Derrickson has shared five horror picks he recommends people check out in the lead-up to Halloween. Derrickson, who helmed the blockbuster films The Day the Earth Stood Still in 2008 and Doctor Strange in 2016, has a long history in the horror genre, going all the way back to his debut feature, the 2000 sequel Hellraiser: Inferno. Since then, he has also overseen The Exorcism of Emily Rose, Sinister, and Deliver Us From Evil, with Sinister in particular earning a reputation as one of the scariest films of all time.
Earlier this year, Derrickson delivered his latest horror film, The Black Phone. The project, which is adapted from a short story by Joe Hill, stars Ethan Hawke as The Grabber, a child abductor who keeps young men trapped in his basement before murdering them. His latest victim is Finney Blake (Mason Thames), who begins to receive calls on a disconnected phone with information from the ghosts of the kids who came before him. The Black Phone‘s box office run proved to be exceptional, raking in $161 million off a budget of about $18 million.
Today on his official Twitter account, Derrickson shared his personal recommendations of five foreign language horror movies to watch this Halloween season. The titles, which include Kim Jee-woon’s I Saw the Devil, Babak Anvari’s Under the Shadow, and Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s Kairo (Pulse), run the gamut of eras between 1996 and 2018. The only region he repeats twice on the list is Spain, with Paco Plaza’s Verónica and Alejandro Amenábar’s Thesis.
Where Are Scott Derrickson’s Horror Movie Recommendations Available Online?
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Luckily for those who want to follow along with Derrickson’s list, every single one of the films he mentions is available online. In fact, at the time of writing, both 2016’s Under the Shadow and 2018’s Verónica are available to stream on Netflix. The South Korean entry I Saw the Devil is also streaming for Hulu subscribers or Prime Video users who have a Monsters and Nightmares subscription. The Japanese film Pulse is also available on Prime Video, meaning that the only film on the list that requires an additional fee is Thesis, which is available on various VOD platforms for a price ranging between $3.99 and $6.99.
Derrickson didn’t say that these films were specifically influences on his work. However, that doesn’t prevent any or all of them from being the perfect pairing with The Black Phone, should fans choose to include that film in their Halloween lineup as well. Considering the fact that the director has recommended the films so strongly, they clearly line up closely with his sensibilities, which would naturally bleed over into his own work.
