While it won’t be available in time for Halloween, the first trailer for Universal Pictures’ upcoming horror film The Black Phone is sure to give you the creeps – and Ethan Hawke will leave you very creeped out. Hawke wears a top hat, a fairly sinister-looking mask, and a pretty spot-on Heath Ledger’s Joker imitation as he abducts and murders young boys in the first trailer for the upcoming thriller. The supernatural thriller is a collaboration between filmmaker Scott Derrickson (Sinister, The Exorcism of Emily Rose, Deliver Us From Evil) and legendary horror film studio Blumhouse.
The Black Phone follows Finney Shaw (Mason Thames), “a quiet but bright 13-year-old child,” after he is abducted by Ethan Hawke’s “The Grabber,” based on a short story from Joe Hill’s New York Times bestseller 20th Century Ghosts. Shaw is then locked in a soundproof basement with a cot and a faulty phone, seemingly doomed to die the same fate as The Grabber’s previous victims — until the phone starts to ring. Shaw must figure out how to escape the cellar and get home free, even if it means taking on The Grabber head-on, using calls from beyond the grave (while the police investigate the case with the help of his prophetic, former classmate).
Jeremy Davies, James Ransome, Madeline McGraw, Kellan Rhude, J. Gaven Wilde, E. Rodger Mitchell, and Gina Jun star alongside Hawke and Thames in The Black Phone. Derrickson & Cargill’s Crooked Highway is producing the film, which will be distributed by Universal and Blumhouse. The Black Phone will be released in theaters on February 4, 2022.
