We still have a couple more months to wait before Universal Pictures’ February 4, 2022 theatrical release of director Scott Derrickson’s new horror film The Black Phone, but today the folks over at Empire got their hands on a new image from The Black Phone that gives us another look at the film’s intensely creepy, mask-wearing villain, The Grabber (played by Ethan Hawke). This image can be seen below, and in it, The Grabber is wearing part of the mask that was designed for the film by legendary effects artist Tom Savini and Jason Baker at Callosum Studios.
Derrickson told Empire that The Grabber wears multiple variations of the mask throughout the movie, each one exposing different portions of his face.
Based on a short story by Joe Hill (it’s in his collection 20th Century Ghosts, which you can buy HERE), The Black Phone is set in the 1970s and stars Mason Thames as
Finney Shaw, a shy but clever 13-year-old boy, who is abducted by a sadistic killer and trapped in a soundproof basement where screaming is of little use. When a disconnected phone on the wall begins to ring, Finney discovers that he can hear the voices of the killer’s previous victims. And they are dead set on making sure that what happened to them doesn’t happen to Finney.
Jeremy Davies plays Finney’s father, Madeleine McGraw is Finney’s sister, and James Ransone is in there as a character named Max.
Derrickson wrote the screenplay adaptation with his Sinister and Doctor Strange co-writer C. Robert Cargill. Derrickson and Cargill are also producing The Black Phone with Blumhouse’s Jason Blum. Hill serves as executive producer.
Our own Gaius Bolling had the chance to watch The Black Phone four months early and gave the film a 9/10 review. You can read what he had to say about it at THIS LINK.