The Black Phone · reception & legacy
2022 · Scott Derrickson
How The Black Phone has been received, argued over, and remembered.
The arc
A sleeper hit in summer 2022 — a Blumhouse original grossing over $160M on a small budget with warm reviews — it's since settled in as one of the decade's most beloved mainstream horrors, its status confirmed when the Grabber returned for a 2025 sequel.
What's debated
The perennial fan debate: is it genuinely scary horror or a coming-of-age thriller wearing a horror mask — with Ethan Hawke's Grabber doing most of the heavy lifting?
Its footprint
The Grabber's devil mask — designed by horror-makeup legend Tom Savini's studio, with its swappable smiling and frowning halves — instantly joined the modern horror-villain iconography and became a Halloween costume staple.
Where it stands
A modern Blumhouse crowd-pleaser and Letterboxd favourite — frequently list-ranked among the best horror of the 2020s and a gateway film for the Joe Hill adaptation wave.