Sightlines · reception
How The Black Phone was received
2022 · Scott Derrickson · The Black Phone on Sightlines
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 favorite — frequently list-ranked among the best horror of the 2020s and a gateway film for the Joe Hill adaptation wave.
Did you know? Scott Derrickson made this after walking away from Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness over creative differences, reuniting with his Sinister star Ethan Hawke — who had long been famously reluctant to play villains — to adapt a short story by Joe Hill, Stephen King's son.