Universal Pictures won’t be releasing Sinister director Scott Derrickson’s new horror film The Black Phone until February 4, 2022, but the trailer has arrived online today to show us that we’re in for a very creepy time when this movie does reach the big screen. You can check it out in the embed above.
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.
Ethan Hawke is playing the mask-wearing child killer known as The Grabber, and he is really unnerving in the trailer. Jeremy Davies plays Finney’s father, Madeleine McGraw is Finney’s sister, and James Ransone is in there as a character named Max. The mask worn by The Grabber was created by legendary effects artist Tom Savini, along with Jason Baker at Callosum Studios.
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.
I haven’t read Joe Hill’s story yet, but I’ve been planning to get around to it sometime before the movie is released. After watching this trailer, I think I’m going to have to go ahead and read that story this evening.