Sinister and Doctor Strange duo Scott Derrickson and C. Robert Cargill return to horror with their brand new Blumhouse horror movie The Black Phone, an adaptation of Joe Hill‘s short story. The Black Phone comes to theaters on Friday, February 4, 2022, and the film features Ethan Hawke as a killer who wears a mask designed by Tom Savini and his team!
The makeup effects legend and Jason Baker designed the film’s mask(s) for Callosum Studios, and it’s a big deal for Savini’s work to be featured in a big screen horror movie again. Most recently, Savini and Baker have been designing masks for World Wrestling Entertainment, helping characters including The Fiend and Alexa Bliss bring a little terror to the squared circle.
Empire shares a brand new image of the mask this week, along with some insights from Derrickson. He tells Empire, “Tom [Savini] gave me a sketch he had done himself. As soon as I saw it, I was like, ‘Oh, well, this is what we’re doing.’ It was really amazing.”
Derrickson adds, “We spent two solid months just rejecting the things that they were sending me. I kept going, ‘It needs to look exactly like Tom’s artwork.’ It was much more of a challenge than I was expecting.” Check out Empire’s new image below.
In the film…
“Finney Shaw, a shy but clever 13-year-old boy, 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.”
Out of the film’s premiere at Fantastic Fest, Meagan wrote in her review for BD, “Derrickson and Cargill revive the same traits and structure of Sinister to transform Hill’s short into a feature-length nightmare full of ghostly kids, violence, and a trio of unforgettable performances.” Ethan Hawke delivers one unforgettably creepy performance as “The Grabber.”
Ethan Hawke (Sinister) and James Ransone (Sinister, It: Chapter Two) lead the cast, which also includes Jeremy Davies (“Hannibal”), Mason Thames and Madeleine McGraw.
The film’s screenplay is by Derrickson & C. Robert Cargill (Doctor Strange, Sinister franchise), based on the award-winning short story by Joe Hill from his New York Times bestseller 20th Century Ghosts. The film is produced by Derrickson & Cargill’s Crooked Highway and presented by Universal and Blumhouse.
Jason Blum, Scott Derrickson and C. Robert Cargill are producers on the film, which is executive produced by Ryan Turek and Christopher H. Warner.
