Hold the phone: the Grabber is back.
Ethan Hawke’s mask-wearing child serial killer has returned from beyond the grave seeking vengeance against his last victim Finn (Mason Thames) and his younger sister Gwen (Madeleine McGraw) in the wintery trailer for Scott Derrickson’s horror sequel, Black Phone 2.
Fans of the original 2022 film will recall that Gwen was instrumental in helping authorities locate where Finn was being held captive by the Grabber through her prophetic dreams. Now, it appears that the Grabber is using her visions to torment her and her brother years down the line.
Universal Pictures/Youtube
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“I had a bad dream,” Gwen confesses to Finn, as the trailer cuts over to show her standing in the Grabber’s torture chamber as the killer begins to stomp down the stairs.
In another sequence, Finn picks up a payphone only to for the Grabber to gaze back at him from outside the telephone booth. “Hello, Finney,” he taunts. “Did you think our story was over?”
When Finn rightly points out that the Grabber is dead, the killer replies: “You of all people know that dead is just a word.”
And, as it turns out, the Grabber is just as deadly in the afterlife as he was in the realm of the living. At one point in the trailer, he violently attacks Gwen in her dreams only for the blows to play out in real life as her body is violently launched into the air and she begins choking on an imaginary telephone cord.
“Vengeance is mine,” the Grabber declares, before ripping off his mask to reveal a bloodied mouth. He can also be seen killing several other children, who seemingly attended the same religious camp that Gwen now goes to, and skating through the snow with an ax in hand.
Joining Thames and McGraw in reprising their roles for the sequel is Jeremy Davies, who played their abusive father Terrence. Demián Bichir, Arianna Rivas, Miguel Mora, Maev Beaty, and Graham Abbey are also set to star in the psychological horror film.
Derrickson and C. Robert Cargill have also returned to pen Black Phone 2‘s script, which is based on characters created by Joe Hill, and also serve as its producers alongside Jason Blum. The film is also executive produced by Hill, Adam Hendricks, and Ryan Turek.
Black Phone 2 rings into theaters on Oct. 17. Watch the trailer above.
