Positive reactions to The Black Phone, the latest horror film from director Scott Derrickson (Sinister, Deliver Us from Evil, Doctor Strange), have been showing up online following the film’s recent Fantastic Fest screening, but the general audience is going to have to wait until the January 28, 2022 theatrical release to check it out. At least we have a poster and some first look images to hold us over – and a couple of these images feature a very cool mask that was created by legendary effects artist Tom Savini, along with Jason Baker at Callosum Studios.
Savini shared the poster himself on Twitter:
The first look images can be seen below.
Set in the 1970s, The Black Phone is based on a short story by Joe Hill 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.
Ethan Hawke is playing the mask-wearing child killer known as The Grabber, with Jeremy Davies as Finney’s father, Madeleine McGraw as Finney’s sister, and James Ransone 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.
I haven’t read the short story (I haven’t read any of Hill’s work except his collaborations with his dad Stephen King, I really need to fix that), but the movie sounds great to me. I’m looking forward to watching this movie next year. Check out a larger image of the The Black Phone poster below!