SPOILER WARNING: The following article contains major spoilers for Black Phone 2. If you have not yet seen the movie, proceed at your own risk!
In Black Phone 2, Mason Thames’ Finney Blake is reintroduced to audiences carrying a lot of baggage. As a kid, he was able to survive the terror of Ethan Hawke’s The Grabber (a.k.a. the events of The Black Phone), but rather than coming away from the incident feeling like a hero, he is traumatized and is filled with anger, fear and sadness that he doesn’t know how to handle. Because of this, there is a whole lot of catharsis at the end of the sequel when the protagonist gets to confront his tormenter again… but it wasn’t just Finney who was getting a big emotional release from the moment, as the scene in the new horror movie apparently allowed the actor to release some real rage as well.
With Black Phone 2 now available in digital release, I had the opportunity to interview Mason Thames last week and talk about his experience making the movie, and one specific sequence I asked about was the final fight between Finney and The Grabber. The young hero demonstrates a hell of a lot of passion when he takes a handful of the killer’s hair and repeatedly smashes his face into the frozen lake they are standing on, and Thames spelled out how the moment was practically shot:
I did not smash Ethan Hawke . I just had his head and we filmed the first part where I remember what I said, I think, ‘Hell isn’t flames, it’s ice,’ and I’d just go like that . And then we cut, and then they replaced him with a full dummy with this head, and it had a skull, muscles, blood, brains, everything. And I just, I remember… I don’t know; it felt like therapy. It was like a rage room.
For those who aren’t familiar, rage rooms are places where people can go and vent any anger/stress they feel by smashing and/or throwing objects with their hands and/or tools. But while your average rage room includes destroyable items like flatware, old appliances and furniture, Mason Thames was given the chance to bash a realistic dummy.
He apparently got a lot out of it… and more than some folks on the crew were expecting. Continuing, the actor added that his rage actually inspired one of Black Phone 2’s producers to do a quick check in with his mother – who was on set and watching his performance. He added,
I really just took out everything on that. And I remember everybody goes, ‘Cut’ and it was kind of silent, and the producer looks at my mom who’s sitting in the video village and says, ‘Is he ok?’ And it was, it was a lot of fun. That was, honestly, that was my favorite scene to shoot in that movie.
This is the kind of fun behind-the-scenes story that adds cool new context whenever you revisit a movie – and you can look for the fire in the star’s eyes right now. Following a successful theatrical run that saw it top the box office for two weekends in October, Black Phone 2 is now available for purchase and rental digitally from major online outlets, and while streaming dates have not yet been announced, the film will be released on 4K UHD and Blu-ray on December 23.