#VAMPIRE SURVIVORS COMBINATION MOVIE#

In a rare villainous turn, Hawke portrays the infamous child murderer with an eerie flare and diabolical glee.

#VAMPIRE SURVIVORS COMBINATION MOVIE#

These additions significantly alter the tone of the original story for better or worse depending on what kind of horror movie you’re looking for. Rather than stay with Finney in the basement, Derrickson continually cuts back and forth between his attempts to escape and Gwen’s efforts to find him. The first scene in Hill’s story, the Grabber dropping his groceries in order to lure Finney to his van, does not occur until at least 30 minutes into the film. But the majority of Derrickson’s additions involve Finney’s troubled home life, his spunky sister Gwen and his abusive father Terrance ( Jeremy Davies). Another future victim named Robin ( Miguel Cazarez Mora) defends Finney from school bullies.

The film begins with these additions, what Hill describes as a “deeply autobiographical thread about life in the 1970s in the Midwest.” Finney meets future victim Bruce ( Tristan Pravong) as the two boys square off on the baseball field. But as the author told Meagan Navarro of Bloody Disgusting, “that’s only about 40 minutes of the film,” presenting Derrickson and Cargill with the challenge of creating the longer story Hill originally intended to write. In an interview with /Film, Hill said, “When I wrote it, I could feel it struggling to become a novel.” Hill envisioned additional layers of the story, including more victims and calls, but says he “lacked the confidence to write it as a novel.” Hill’s entire story is present in the film adaptation including some exchanges pulled word for word from the original text. The reader stays with the frightened boy through the duration of the story, creating a terrifying feeling of claustrophobia and helplessness. Finney begins receiving calls on the broken device from the Grabber’s previous victims giving him encouragement and clues to survive his awful predicament.Īt just nineteen pages, Hill’s original tale is lean and mean, beginning with Finney’s abduction and otherwise taking place entirely within the Grabber’s basement. When Finney is dragged into a sinister van by a part-time magician and full-time child murderer known as The Grabber (Hawke), he winds up in a basement cell containing only a dirty mattress and a mysterious black phone. His only ally is his sister Gwen ( Madeleine McGraw) who may or may not have inherited a psychic talent from her late mother.

Robert Cargill and star Ethan Hawke to expand and adapt the 7th story in Hill’s award winning collection “20th Century Ghosts.”įinney ( Mason Thames) is a 13-year old boy struggling to dodge the bullies at school and an alcoholic father at home. Derrickson reunites with Sinister co-writer C. Joe Hill’s darkest short story comes to the big screen in Scott Derrickson’s latest film, The Black Phone.

Vampire survivors combination