When horror fans first heard the sequel to Black Phone was coming, there was excitement, but also confusion. Did Grabber, the diabolical child killer, die at the end of the 2021 film, allowing his eventual final victim to escape? Of course he did! But given the ghostly presence already established thanks to Grabber’s haunted basement phone, the villain is set to return in Black Phone 2. And according to Mason Thames, who plays the very happy Finny, Grabber (played again by Ethan Hawke) reminded him of another diabolical child killer returning from the grave.
In a new interview with Entertainment Weekly , Thames said that the grappler — who returns to torment teenage Finny through the dreams of his younger sister Gwen (Madeleine McGraw) — has something in common with A Nightmare on Elm Street ‘s Freddy Krueger.
“The way the grappler is in this movie reminds me a lot of Freddy Krueger, only angrier and I think a lot tougher because he’s trying to kill me,” Thames told the magazine. “He’s really scary. This movie and the powers he’s given, to say the least, it’s crazy and it’s so scary to see that he’s really almost like an unstoppable force, that guy.”
The worst part is that Grabber “realizes killing Finney or trying to hurt him wouldn’t affect him as much as hurting the person he loved,” according to Thames.
Directed by Scott Derrickson, Black Phone 2 has its world premiere at Fantastic Fest next week; it hits theaters on October 17, bringing the screen grabber’s over-the-top supernatural powers to terrify audiences once again.
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