The Grabber What happened to Robin? Robin was killed by the Grabber. While Robin was good enough to defend the bullies at school and protect Finny, he was no match for the Grabber, who is very built and would have come at him with knives.
Contents
- 1 Who took Robin The Black Phone?
- 2 Do they find Robin in The Black Phone?
- 3 What does Robin do in The Black Phone?
- 4 What did The Grabber do to each boy?
- 5 Is Black Phone Based on a true story?
- 6 Why can the grabber hear the phone?
- 7 Is there going to be a Black Phone 2?
What did The Grabber do to his victims?
Where did the Grabber bury the boys? – He abducted five teenagers and imprisoned them in his basement behind his brother’s back, before killing them and burying them in the house across the street. After killing one of the kids, he stole a lock from their bike and used it to lock the front door.
Who took Robin The Black Phone?
Robin – The Best Friend – Finney has two friends in The Black Phone : his sister Gwen and The Grabber’s fifth victim, Robin (Miguel Cazarez Mora). Robin sticks up for Finney and was also the toughest kid in school after Bruce was taken by The Grabber. He’s the last victim to contact Finney through the Black Phone, and his advice is pretty simple: stand up to The Grabber and use the phone as a weapon.
He gives him some fighting tips and a pep talk about how Finney could always take a punch. Robin represents Finney’s confidence. When he tells Donna to call him Finn, it’s a name he wears as a reminder of what Robin called him. Robin believed in Finney when Finney couldn’t — a cornerstone of their friendship.
The Black Phone is a unique horror movie because of its focus on the victims of its villains. Part of why The Black Phone is getting such positive reviews is because of how it handles its themes of victimhood, violence against children, and standing up to aggressors.
Do they find Robin in The Black Phone?
‘The Black Phone’ Director Scott Derrickson Reveals a Last-Minute Change to the End
Making a horror film about a sadistic child killer could be a challenge in and of itself, but The Black Phone co-writer and director said there was one scene that was particularly difficult to execute.In one upsetting moment, Terrence Blake (Jeremy Davies), the alcoholic father of missing child Finney (Mason Thames), whips his daughter, Gwen (Madeleine McGraw).
“That was probably the one that I felt the most nervous about,” Derrickson tells The Hollywood Reporter, “I chose the kitchen that I chose because it had a long counter. I realized you could really go too far with a scene like that very easily, and an audience can turn on a movie.
- I wanted them to be disturbed and upset by it, but I didn’t want them to turn on it.” So, Derrickson chose to soften the moment in the film.
- I thought, ‘I don’t want to see this kid actually getting hit.’ So the very first strike happens offscreen,” says Derrickson.
- She’s below the counter, and it’s more his rage that’s upsetting.
And then her really emotional performance, most of that occurs when she stands back up and has this long face-off with him. He’s got the belt raised, but he never actually hits her again. And so that was all worked out very specifically in choreography.” Moreover, Derrickson says, there was a big last-minute change that proved quite challenging.
- In one of the final scenes of the film, Robin (Miguel Cazarez Mora), a former victim who has been speaking with Finney courtesy of the film’s disconnected black phone, shows up as a ghost.
- The problem? That wasn’t the original plan — and the young actor who plays Robin had already flown home.
- In the script, Robin wasn’t in the room.
It was just a phone call,” Derrickson explains. “A day or two before we shot that, it suddenly hit me out of nowhere. I was like, ‘Oh, the audience wants to see that kid again. We got to see him again. It’s not going feel right if we don’t see him again.’ I was like, ‘Where’s that kid?’ and they were like, ‘We just flew him home.’ I was like, ‘Get him back.
- You got to fly him back.'” On the morning that the scene was to be filmed, Derrickson hadn’t blocked how it would go.
- He found himself standing on set alone, coming up with ideas on the fly for how Robin and Finney come face to face.
- I end up doing it all in one shot,” says Derrickson, who believes it is one of the best moments of the film.
“I think a good director always has an antenna up trying to hear what this movie really wants to be. If you do that, you can sometimes make decisions that are bigger than you.” Derrickson says that when he and C. Robert Cargill wrote the script, they wanted to make sure that there wasn’t a common denominator for why ‘s Grabber chose his victims.
They were all different — some were tough, some were weak, some were small, some were not. He is particularly moved by Griffin (Banks Repeta), the boy who is bent over upside down in the film. “Even though we don’t see a backstory for him, I’m really moved by what he said. When Finney says, ‘You’re Griffin,’ he goes, ‘Maybe.’ And Finney goes, ‘I didn’t know you,’ and he says, ‘Nobody did.
One day nobody knows your name, and then the next day you’re in every headline and everybody knows your name,'” recalls Derrickson. “He represented that kind of small, invisible kid, and then Finney is in the middle.” Continues the filmmaker: “The idea of it was to represent a great range from the smallest, weakest kid to the toughest, strongest kid.
- Putting two of the toughest, strongest kids at the top emphasized how dangerous the Grabber is, that they were incapable of defending themselves or escaping his dungeon.
- It could happen to anyone.” The Black Phone hit theaters this weekend and also stars Mason Thames and James Ransone.
- You can read part one of THR’ s interview with Derrickson,
: ‘The Black Phone’ Director Scott Derrickson Reveals a Last-Minute Change to the End
What does Robin do in The Black Phone?
Let’s Meet the Ghosts – The first ghost Finney is contacted by is Bruce ( Tristan Pravong ), who shows where there’s a loose tile on the floor from where it’s possible to access the dirt below. Finney tries to dig his way outside his cell, but the process is too slow to be effective.
Then, Billy ( Jacob Moran ) reveals he has hidden a long wire in the slit between the wall and the floor, which Finney could use to hook onto the grate covering the basement’s only window and climb out. The grate, however, falls with Finney’s weight. Then, it’s time for Griffin ( Banks Repeta ) to reveal the code for the lock protecting the Grabber’s house main door (it happens to be his bike lock).
Finney gets to the street, but the serial killer drags him back to the basement. The last escape route is revealed by Vance ( Brady Hepner ), who teaches Finney to break a hole through the wall to gain access to a big freezer. Finney unscrews a metal plaque in the back of the freezer, but this route is also barred since the freezer’s doors are locked from the outside. Robin teaches Finney how to use the black phone as a weapon by filling the handset with the dirt he previously dug. Robin walks Finney through a movement with the phone to make sure he’ll knock the Grabber down, but just in case, he also decides to set a trap. With Billy’s wire and the screws from the freezer, Finn prepares to make the Grabber fall into the hole he dug on the floor.
What did The Grabber do to Robin?
Kidnapping – Robin’s Disappearance Poster. On November 9, 1978, Robin was walking past an establishment when a black van was waiting for him, The Grabber is seen exiting the van. Robin was placed in the soundproof basement by The Grabber and was subsequently killed by him.
What did The Grabber do to each boy?
Past – Not much is known about the serial child murderer known as the Grabber. What is known is he lives with his drug addict brother in a Denver suburb and has a day job. For reasons unknown, the Grabber abducts young boys and imprisons them in his basement unbeknownst to his brother.
Is Max the grabbers brother?
Max – Max was The Grabber’s brother and roommate. He had an addiction to cocaine and a comical personality. In his free time, Max investigated The Grabber’s crimes even though he unknowingly lived with the killer. He was murdered by The Grabber after discovering Finney in the basement.
Who is the serial killer in The Grabber?
What’s really going on in The Black Phone. – Ethan Hawke in The Black Phone, Universal Pictures In the supernatural horror film The Black Phone, a new box-office hit, a sadistic child abductor and killer known as “the Grabber” (Ethan Hawke) terrorizes a quaint suburb with a theatrical flair and a van filled with black balloons.
- The Grabber is on the prowl in late 1970s Colorado, and he preys on “all-American” boys, luring them into his black van before locking them in a dark, austere basement, playing a “game” with them, and murdering them.
- It appears that no boy is safe—not Bruce Yamada, the popular and handsome baseball player; not an unsuspecting paperboy named Billy; not the tough yet kindhearted bully slayer Robin Arellano; and not Robin’s meek friend and tutor Finney Shaw (Mason Thames).
One Friday afternoon, the Grabber snatches Finney on a quiet street as the youngster walks home from school, and the film kicks fully into its queasy exploitation of the panics of the late 1970s, a moment fraught with anxieties about serial killers and violent crime.
We didn’t have milk carton ads yet—although they appear anachronistically in the film’s opening credits—but “stranger danger” began here, and The Black Phone revels in the throwback nightmare. The Grabber is sadistic, vaguely satanic, and coded as queer, with a predilection for fair-skinned teenage boys.
The character distills and expresses many of the fears that animated white suburban America in the late ’70s and into the 1980s: Widespread concerns about homosexual depravity and boyhood innocence transformed horrific but rare incidents such as the Etan Patz abduction and the Adam Walsh kidnapping and murder into major events with national resonance.
- The Black Phone draws on this history, endowing its young protagonists Finney and Gwen Shaw (Madeleine McGraw) with the strength of the Grabber’s previous young male victims, who communicate with Finney through a mysterious, magical black phone.
- The movie never quite depicts sexual abuse, and it confines the killer’s queerness to coy hints.
But it clearly taps into deeply rooted moral panics concerning child sexual exploitation, “grooming,” and homosexual predation— panics that are, not incidentally, very much ongoing today, Though set nearly 40 years ago, The Black Phone arrives at a peculiar moment to reflect (and perhaps shape) America’s present anxieties about real and imagined threats to children.
The best of movies, TV, books, music, and more, delivered to your inbox. In the movie—directed by horror veteran Scott Derrickson ( Sinister ) and adapted from a 2004 short story by Joe Hill—the Grabber efficiently kidnaps and kills his other victims, but Finney’s case presents certain challenges. For one, the Grabber’s brother Max, a true crime and cocaine aficionado, is visiting, preventing the Grabber from operating as brazenly as he normally does.
And Finney can hear the voices of the Grabber’s previous victims, who guide him in the hope that he’ll avoid their fate. They identify potential escape routes and traps set by the Grabber. When the Grabber leaves the basement door ajar, Finney sees a way out, but one of his guides (speaking through the black phone) begs him not to take the bait: The Grabber is waiting—half-naked, seated, whip in hand, prepared to “punish” his young victim.
Finney’s refusal to play “naughty boy,” the Grabber’s game, complicates the kidnapper’s wicked plan. Though The Black Phone tries to avoid making it explicit, The Grabber is heavily coded in this moment as not just a kidnapper and murderer but also a sexual predator, presumably fueled by pedophilic desire.
Hawke’s Grabber is whimsical, with a penchant for magic and theatrics. He dons white stage makeup, terrifying adjustable masks, garish rings, and a cape and top hat at times. He speaks in dulcet, high-pitched tones, unless he’s threatening or abusing a victim, in which case his voice deepens and grows rougher.
With his capricious swings between childishness and aggression, Hawke’s portrayal gestures to some of the most notorious mass killers of the 1970s, a decade in which researchers, law enforcement officials, and everyday Americans became increasingly interested in the phenomena of serial rape and murder.
In 1972, the Federal Bureau of Investigation established its Behavioral Science Unit, dedicated to studying and profiling serial rapists and killers such as Dean Corll (known as “the Candy Man” because he gave children free candy from his family’s candy factory) and the infamous clown John Wayne Gacy.
(The Grabber is a “part-time clown” in Hill’s short story, but in the movie, he’s a magician.) In the late 1970s and into the 1980s, Jeffrey Dahmer and Wayne Williams—who, like Gacy and Corll, targeted boys and young men from marginalized communities—struck fear into the hearts of millions. The gruesome details circulated in the nightly news and in true crime literature for years to come.
But just as significant as the details shared in the media were the aspects of these crimes that remained unspoken. The filmmakers behind The Black Phone leave us to learn of the Grabber’s worst deeds through the voices of his past victims. The film, again, doesn’t explicitly state that the Grabber’s victims were sexually assaulted, but it calls upon the audience to fill in those details.
The ghost victims describe being beaten, and the audience sees the Grabber sitting menacingly, shirtless, with belt in hand. One victim tells Finney over the phone that he lost his innocence amid abuse that was far worse than the belt-beating. The Grabber also “reassures” Finney with the chilling remark “I’m not going to make you do anything you won’t like.” We understand Finney’s kidnapping is only the beginning of the harm to come.
The details of the Grabber’s queerness—his light, airy voice, flair for theatrics, immaturity, and isolation, interrupted only by the presence of his brother during Finney’s captivity—provide all that an audience steeped in decades of queer panic needs to fill in those blanks.
This invitation to imagine the specific threats that deviant people pose, particularly to children, was a key feature of the “stranger danger” discourse of the 1980s and 1990s. Bereaved parents, the media, and the “moral entrepreneurs” who sought to profit from a growing child safety regime often promulgated conspiracy theories about child sex trafficking rings, stories of gruesome experiments conducted on children, and tales of the satanic ritual abuse of kids.
The McMartin preschool saga involved wild, unsubstantiated accounts of underground tunnels, animal sacrifice, and supernatural activity. During a 1984 U.S. Senate hearing, the mother of missing paperboy Johnny Gosch insisted that the North American Man/Boy Love Association (and possibly other “homosexual groups”) had kidnapped her son and incorporated him into their “organized pedophilia operations.” For his part, grieving father and longtime America’s Most Wanted host John Walsh often marshaled spectacular (or imagined) cases of child exploitation to advance his tough-on-crime agenda.
A 1984 Chicago Tribune profile detailed Walsh’s breakfast with a friend, the parent of an 18-month-old daughter: “Just envision it for a minute, a 200-pound man raping your daughter,” he told his friend. “I mean it. Envision it. It could happen.” These elaborate, concocted visions of child abuse persist in our growing contemporary queer panic, with clear evidence in today’s Florida and elsewhere,
Without evidence of any actual threat, concerned parents are instead called to imagine the harms queer and trans teachers, coaches, and students might perpetrate upon “innocent” children. Because these are imagined threats rather than substantive ones, it is not surprising that these anxieties have coalesced around vague notions of “grooming” and recruiting, which were central to the anti-gay campaigns waged by Anita Bryant and others in the late 1970s, the same moment in which Finney gets taken by the Grabber.
Bryant infamously claimed that gay men “must recruit” because they could not reproduce. So is The Black Phone simply playing on these echoes of panics past and present, or using them to stoke more terror? Doesn’t a movie like this feel bizarrely regressive in 2022? Yes and no. The Black Phone suggests that just as harmful as the imagined threats posed by queer boogiemen are the very real threats within the institutions thought to keep children safe.
Abusive parents, school bullies, and incompetent police officers endanger even those children not taken by the Grabber. North Denver’s adults fail to mobilize to protect the town’s children, who are consistently seen walking and biking alone, vulnerable to predation.
And in one of the most disturbing scenes in the film, Finney and Gwen’s alcoholic widower father, Terrence, brutally beats Gwen with a belt as Finney looks on helplessly. Ultimately, it is not the adults who rescue Finney but other kids: It’s his sister, Gwen, whose clairvoyance provides vital clues for the bumbling detectives, the ghost children who guide Finney with the help of the black phone, and Finney himself who musters the courage to fight back.
While right-wing politicians and moral entrepreneurs continue to incite their forever panics, the reality of child endangerment is far less sensational. The perils confronting the nation’s children rarely take the form of a sinister, queer, masked predator prowling suburban streets for his next victim.
Crime Kids Horror LGBTQ+
Why did The Grabber cover his face?
Here’s everything The Black Phone reveals about The Grabber’s creepy mask, why he wears it, and the deeper meaning behind why he covers his face. The Black Phone Grabber mask has a deeper meaning than it seems. Though The Grabber’s mask seems as though it shares some commonality with other masked horror villains, the way he employs it as a changeable piece distinguishes The Grabber from his contemporaries.
- Sometimes The Grabber wears it with a wide and unsettling rictus, sometimes it features a deep frown, and sometimes it’s completely blank and empty.
- The Grabber even opts to sometimes wear just the top of the mask, allowing his expression to be seen or, in a key scene, just the bottom piece, freezing the bottom of his face in the grin while violently threatening the film’s protagonist, Finney.
Unlike many horror villains who use their masks to hide their identity, The Black Phone ‘s Grabber breaks a horror rule and is sometimes seen partially or fully without it. While his mask is important to his identity, it doesn’t exist to conceal it from others.
Instead, The Grabber employs the mask as a sort of theater — the different Grabber mask variations each represent characters in a show he’s putting on for himself and his victims. A few scenes in The Black Phone suggest yet another motivation for his mask: he uses it to hide from himself out of shame for his actions.
Here’s why The Grabber mask is so iconic despite The Black Phone only releasing in 2022.
Is Black Phone Based on a true story?
Inspired By vs. Based On – Universal Pictures It is important to state that even though The Black Phone did take a lot of inspiration from real-life cases, elements of IT, and the filmmaker’s own personal upbringing, it is not based on any particular case or serial killer. Movies that have opening titles with ‘inspired by’ mean that they are not true accounts of what happened; instead, something happened that sparked an idea for the writer or director.
In contrast, ‘based on’ means that the circumstances and characters are (or should be) based on real occurrences or a previous work. The Black Phone is both ‘based on’ as well as ‘inspired by’ elements of reality. The movie is the adaptation of the short story (based on) and was modified and influenced by the director of the film.
Derrickson explained to IGN how he combined his personal experiences with the changes he made to the original story, “The idea came to me to combine my own experiences growing up in a blue-collar, violent neighborhood in North Denver in the late ’70s with The Black Phone.” Cargill told Yahoo! News that he was ultimately more committed to the film after incorporating the same kinds of traumas that both Cargill adn especially Derrickson experienced.
Derrickson said: All of the ghost kids are like real kids that I knew. The Robin Arellano character especially. That’s a kid who I was friends with. And some of the things he says in the movie are verbatim things that I remember him saying to me after watching him pulverize this kid’s face behind the Safeway across from our middle school.
I felt like I had a good understanding of the various children that could flesh out this movie. This is why the movie is so effective in its emotional core while being able to scare the audience. Starting out in a place of deep trauma makes it impossible not to connect and root for these kids.
Why did Robin from black phone walk to the grabber?
Why did Robin walk to the van? – Robin didn’t walk towards the black van. He was walking on his regular daily path, and the Grabber was waiting for him that day. In that scene it only looks like Robin is walking up to the van but he isn’t.
Why can the grabber hear the phone?
Is The Black Phone Really Ringing? – The Black Phone’ s ending connects many dots but never explains why The Grabber can hear the ringing. This could mean that it is only a figment of his — and Finney’s — imagination. Finney hears the phone ring and uses it as a coping mechanism to deal with his overbearing feelings of isolation and desperation.
To somehow make sense of his harrowing situation and map out an effective escape plan, it is possible that he imagines being guided by the spirits of the killer’s dead victims. This makes even more sense considering that the murders were the talk of the town, and Finney was already well-versed with all the victims’ identities.
Meanwhile, for The Grabber, the phone ring could be a psychological rendering of his underlying guilt for committing those murders. Playing something along the lines of Mike Flannagan’s horror Netflix show The Haunting, The Black Phone probably tries to portray that The Grabber is seeing the figurative ghosts of his bad deeds.
- Even though several theories can be drawn to dismiss The Black Phone ‘s paranormal plotlines, Gwen’s side of the story confirms that the film is not bereft of Black Phone supernatural underpinnings.
- Not just the black phone but several other secondary narrative elements in the film are purposefully left shrouded in ambiguity and open to a viewer’s interpretation.
Considering how Stephen King does something similar by binding other-worldly terror to the real world, it is not surprising that Joe Hill, Stephen King’s son, drew some inspiration from Stephen King’s brand of horror when he penned down The Black Phone ( via SlashFilm ).
Is there going to be a Black Phone 2?
The Black Phone 2: Could a sequel work? Universal and Blumhouse are currently developing a sequel to The Black Phone – and we’re trying to figure out how that would work. Director Scott Derrickson’s adaptation of the Joe Hill short story The Black Phone was well-received by critics and the general audience alike.83% of the reviews listed on Rotten Tomatoes are positive, and more importantly it earned over $161 million at the box office on a budget that was just under $20 million.
doesn’t lend itself to being sequelized, the story stands on its own and is wrapped up by the time the end credits start rolling but when something is as successful as this movie was, that opens the sequel door. And at CinemaCon in April, The Black Phone producer Jason Blum (founder of Blumhouse Productions) confirmed that they’re planning to make a follow-up.
With Blumhouse having huge success with their Insidious franchise, could The Black Phone be their next big bet? So now we have to take a moment to ponder The Black Phone 2 : Could a sequel work? Before we get started, a reminder of what The Black Phone was all about.
Mason Thames starred as Finney Shaw, a shy but clever 13-year-old boy, who 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, Madeleine McGraw had a memorable role as Finney’s sister Gwen, who has psychic visions in her dreams (just like their mom did), and Ethan Hawke played the mask-wearing child killer known as The Grabber.
HERO SEQUEL With The Grabber having been defeated, the most appealing option for a sequel to The Black Phone would be one that follows up with Finney and Gwen a few years after the events of the first film and sees them getting mixed up in some other kind of horrific situation – maybe even one they’re led into by Gwen’s psychic abilities.
She could have psychic dreams about someone who needs help, and when she and her brother try to provide that assistance, they find that their lives are in danger as well. The scenario would be up to the screenwriters to figure out, but this approach would give viewers the chance to see Mason Thames and Madeleine McGraw play Finney and Gwen again, and that alone would be enough to make a sequel worthwhile.
- ANTHOLOGY SEQUEL Here’s a less appealing option, and one we’d be more likely to see if Universal Pictures were to decide to turn The Black Phone into a direct-to-video franchise.
- Which is certainly a possibility, as Universal loves to pump out direct-to-video sequels.
- Look up the Tremors, Bring It On, Dragonheart, American Pie, Scorpion King, Death Race, and Chucky franchises for proof.) The anthology approach would introduce a whole new cast of characters.
No Finney or Gwen, no Grabber. Instead, we’d follow other people who find themselves in a life-or-death situation and get help from beyond, just like Finney getting his supernatural phone calls while he was stuck in The Grabber’s basement. We could get a whole series of ” Black Phone ” movies that are only connected to each other by the set-up of spirits helping people out of a bad spot.
- Perhaps that would be a welcome alternative a simpler version that would strictly be seen as The Black Phone 2,
- VILLAIN PREQUEL The Grabber was such a memorable villain, both in look (wearing his multi-piece mask that was designed by FX legend Tom Savini) and performance (Ethan Hawke is awesome), would Universal and Blumhouse want to leave him out of a sequel? They could try to build this guy up into a new horror icon and it might seem in poor taste to make someone who abducts and murders children an icon, but that’s exactly what Freddy Krueger did before he became a dream stalker.
To bring The Grabber back as a flesh and blood character, they’d have to make a prequel. Which would probably turn out to be a really dark and depressing movie, because there’s no way to get around it having a downer ending where The Grabber gets away with his crimes.
- GRABBER RETURNS Speaking of Freddy Another way to bring The Grabber back and try to build him into a horror icon would be to turn him into a supernatural being who continues messing with children from beyond the grave.
- He could target a new batch of victims, or the idea of a supernatural Grabber could be mixed with the idea of focusing on Finney and Gwen.
Maybe his evil spirit is still lingering around the siblings. Maybe they have to find a way to vanquish him, or maybe he just appears to them in their dreams and visions while they deal with a different situation. Either way, it’s difficult to imagine this approach working out in the long run, because it doesn’t seem like “Play a Horror Icon in Multiple Sequels” would be on Ethan Hawke’s To Do list.
What’s the ending of black phone?
How Does The Black Phone End And Does Finney Escape The Grabber? – In The Black Phone ending, Gwen sees where Finney is and tells the police where to go. She has been having visions related to The Grabber throughout the movie, which upsets her father since her mother did as well. Gwen stays strong, however, and she’s one of the best horror movie main characters because she does what feels right to her.
When The Grabber tries to hurt Finney, Finney attacks him. The spirits of his previous victims make fun of The Grabber and Finney kills The Grabber with the cord of the phone. This is a brutal moment that brings the story full circle and makes the movie’s title feel even more powerful. Gwen and Finney are happy to be together again.
The siblings experience a moving moment with their father, who says that he is sorry and that he will be a better parent. The Black Phone ends with Finney in school chatting with the girl he likes. It’s a satisfying horror movie ending that ties up every loose end and is also incredibly emotional.
After what he has been through, Finney definitely deserves a happy ending, and it’s great to see him finding more confidence. The Black Phone ending is all about the strength that Finney and Gwen have inside of them despite some terrible luck and awful life circumstances. Even though they can’t change the situations that they have found themselves in, they have maintained a tough and hopeful attitude despite all evidence otherwise.
While it’s fun seeing Ethan Hawke play The Black Phone villain, it’s the kid characters who bring feeling, layers and complexity to the story.
What is Finn’s last name in The Black Phone?
Finney Blake is the main protagonist of the 2022 horror film The Black Phone.
Did Finn survive The Grabber?
– Article continues after ad Finney grabs a steak from the freezer to distract the dog, before heading upstairs and walking outside. It’s then revealed this home is literally across the street from the burial ground, and Gwen sees him standing alone. They embrace, and their alcoholic father asks them to forgive him for how he’s treated them.
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- As for Gwen’s visions that led the police to the bodies in the first place, Cargill told : “It’s a balancing act in the beginning as we see Gwen being the one with supernatural powers and helping out her brother.
- Article continues after ad “But as you put things together, you come to realize that Gwen has essentially half of her mother’s powers and Finney has the other half.
It’s just that Finney has never been in a situation where he’s experienced them before, so this is his first experience with these powers. “And the phone itself is kind of a conduit to those powers, which they both got from their mom.” The Black Phone is available to stream on Amazon Prime Video now.
What did The Grabber spray in Finney’s mouth?
THE BLACK PHONE NOTE: This spoiler was submitted by Jeremy Denver, CO, 1978 – Kids and parents are gathered for a little league baseball game. Finney Blake (Mason Thames) is pitching, with his sister Gwen (Madeleine McGraw) chewing him on. Finney manages to throw two balls that get strikes, but on the third, another player, Bruce Yamada (Tristan Pravong), hits the ball and scores a home run, letting his team win.
Despite the loss, Bruce commends Finney for his arm. Bruce is later seen riding his bike around town, greeting some girls from school along the way. Then a black van pulls up in front of Bruce, and he stops in his tracks. Finney and Gwen live with their father (Jeremy Davies), an abusive alcoholic still mourning the loss of his wife and the kids’ mother after she committed suicide.
As the siblings start walking to school, they see a crowd of kids gathered as the school bully Moose (J Gaven Wilde) is antagonizing another kid named Robin Arellano (Miguel Cazarez Mora). To everyone’s surprise, Robin is skilled at fighting and dominates Moose, beating his face to a bloody pulp.
Finney and Gwen keep walking, with Gwen mentioning a local kidnapped known only as “The Grabber” (Ethan Hawke), since they have learned that Bruce has gone missing. At school, Finney is bullied by three boys who follow him into the bathroom and call him names. Robin enters and threatens the bullies if they mess with Finney.
Robin also encourages Finney to stand up for himself. Meanwhile, two detectives (E Roger Mitchell and Troy Rudeseal) come to the school and speak to Gwen in the principal’s office. Gwen claims she has dreams relating to the missing children taken by The Grabber, but she cannot explain the meaning behind these dreams.
- The next day, Finney wakes up to find his father beating Gwen because of the cops visiting his job and asking questions regarding Gwen’s dreams and the correlation between that and Bruce’s disappearance.
- Gwen breaks her dad’s liquor bottle, and he beats her harder.
- He orders Gwen to say that her dreams are not real, as her mother had similar dreams that were believed to be premonitions.
Later on, Robin is riding his bike around the neighborhood. He then turns the corner and finds The Grabber waiting for him, holding black balloons (which were also reported as being seen when Bruce went missing). Parents around the neighborhood are informed about Robin’s disappearance.
- The bullies at school then go after Finney and start to beat him, but Gwen defends him by whacking one bully over the head with a rock, causing him to bleed a lot.
- Gwen gets kicked in the face, and the other two bullies continue to beat Finney.
- Later during class, Finney is paired up with his crush Donna (Rebecca Clarke) as his science partner.
She offers sympathies for Finney getting beaten. Finney splits from Gwen as they walk home, and he encounters The Grabber’s van. He poses as a regular man spilling his groceries, but once Finney spots the black balloons, The Grabber attacks Finney and sprays his mouth with a chemical to knock him out before he’s thrown into the van.
Gwen and other kids from school soon learn that Finney is missing. The Grabber brings Finney to his basement and keeps him prisoner. There is only one window but no way for anyone to hear him if he screams. The Grabber taunts Finney but assures him he’s “special.” On the wall is a black phone that is disconnected, which The Grabber claims to have heard ringing before.
Later, the phone rings again, and Finney answers it. He hears the voice of Bruce, who notes Finney’s arm in baseball, calling it “mint”. However, Bruce doesn’t remember his own name or what he did when he was alive. Bruce gives Finney a tip about a space in the floor where he can move a tile and begin digging.
- Finney spends his time digging and flushing the dirt down the toilet.
- Gwen has a dream where she sees a flashback of Bruce’s life from childhood, and his developing interest in baseball. Mr.
- Blake talks to Gwen, saying that her mother would talk about having dreams that are visions just like Gwen does, and he thinks this drove her to commit suicide, so he wants to prevent Gwen from falling down the same path.
The Grabber brings Finney eggs and a Sprite, assuring him the food is clean. He also leaves the door unlocked, but as Finney walks toward it, he hears the phone ringing again, and he hears the voice of a local paperboy named Billy (Jacob Moran. While talking to Finney, his ghost appears next to him, his face having been slashed by The Grabber.
Billy tells Finney that the unlocked door is a trap, and The Grabber will be waiting upstairs for him with a knife. Billy mentions a cable he left in a crack under the wall. Finney grabs a rolled up mat and slides the cable up to the window bars and attempts to climb his way out, but his weight causes the bars to get pulled off, leaving him with no way to get back up.
Another flashback/dream shows Billy’s life as a paperboy, delivering with his dog before The Grabber got him. The detectives go around the neighborhood and speak to a man named Max (James Ransone), who is doing his own investigation into the missing kids.
- He tells the detectives that he is staying with his brother for the time being.
- Meanwhile, Gwen tries to take whatever info she can from her dreams to try and find her brother.
- The Grabber asks Finney his name, but when he lies about it, he throws Finney a newspaper showing the news of his disappearance.
When he leaves, the phone rings again, and Finney speaks to a boy named Griffin (Michael Banks Repeta). His ghost appears floating beside Finney, and Griffin tells him about a lock combination that he had written down. This is part of a game The Grabber likes to play with his victims called “Naughty Boy”.
Finney finds the numbers, but Griffin cannot remember the exact combo. While The Grabber is sleeping, Finney sneaks upstairs and tries every combo he can think of until he unlocks the door. Unfortunately, The Grabber’s dog Samson barks at the sound of the unlocking, which wakes up The Grabber. Finney runs out of the house and only makes it barely down the street before The Grabber catches him.
Neighbors turn on their lights, but The Grabber threatens to kill Finney right then and there if he makes a sound. He waits until the lights turn off before taking Finney back. The phone rings again later, but this time, Finney hears the voice of a local punk named Vance Hopper (Brady Hepner).
- A flashback/dream shows Vance at an arcade where he fought with two kids after one of them messed with his high score.
- He was arrested shorty after.
- In the flashback, Gwen finds herself alongside Vance, who is talking to Finney through the police radio, but Finney cannot hear Gwen calling out to him.
- They end up at a house, where Gwen tries to remember the number.
She later rides her bike through the area to find the house and is spooked by the ghosts of The Grabber’s victims. Finney listens to Vance’s “advice” and finds a space behind the wall where there is a freezer. Finney tries to push through the door as hard as he can, but to no avail.
- He begins crying, fearing that he will die there.
- The phone rings one more time, and he answers.
- It’s Robin, and he remembers both Finney and his own life.
- He tells Finney that he was always his friend, and that now is the time that he really needs to stand up for himself.
- Robin tells Finney to practice using the phone as a weapon and to fill the receiver with dirt to add some heft to it.
Gwen contacts the detectives and goes with them to the address she saw in her dreams. While this happens, Max comes to the conclusion that the missing kids are in the house he is staying in – because The Grabber is his brother. He goes to the basement and is shocked to find Finney there.
Just as Max attempts to help, The Grabber kills him with an axe to the head. He goes after Finney, but the boy has utilized all the help from the ghost kids at his disposal. He sets up a rug over the hole he dug, using the cable to trip The Grabber and drop him into the hole, where he breaks his ankle after it hits the bars from the window.
Como Derrotar O GRABBER em \
Finney then begins wailing on The Grabber with the phone, and it rings one last time. Finney forces The Grabber to hear the voices of his victims taunting him over his demise, and Finney snaps his neck. He grabs a steak from the freezer and throws it to Samson to keep him distracted.
- The detectives search the house, but find it empty until one officer finds the basement.
- Instead of finding Finney, the detectives find the bodies of the other five boys buried in the dirt.
- The house where Finney was being held is across the street.
- He unlocks the door and steps out into the sun, where Gwen sees him and runs to her brother.
The authorities take care of the kids, and they are picked up by their father, who tearfully apologizes to both of them for how he treated them. Finney returns to school more confident than before. The other kids see him as a legend for killing The Grabber, and the bullies no longer dare to mess with him.
*CUT TO THE CHASE* Brought to you by
In Denver in the late 70’s, a serial killer known as The Grabber kidnaps five boys. The sixth boy, Finney Blake, is kept in his basement and overhears a disconnected phone on the wall ringing. He hears the voices of The Grabber’s victims, all of whom give him tips on how to survive and escape.
- Meanwhile, Finney’s sister Gwen attempts to find her brother with the help of her dreams, as she sees visions of real world events.
- Finney makes one escape attempt but is quickly caught by The Grabber.
- Gwen manages to find the address to the house in one of her dreams and leads detectives to the house.
The Grabber’s brother Max finds out that Finney is being kept in the basement of his house, but The Grabber kills Max before he can free him. Finney utilizes all the assets that the dead kids gave him so he can take on The Grabber. He traps him in a hole that he dug and he uses the phone filled with dirt to beat The Grabber before strangling him and snapping his neck.
Why did the Grabber kidnap kids?
Finn’s sister has dreams that can reveal her things, and Terence said her mother “Saw things, heard things”, so it’s clear there’s some sensitivity running in the family, paranormal powers whatever you wanna call it. Then later in the movie, one of the ghost kids say The Grabber can hear the phone too, but he doesn’t want to believe it.
- The Grabber himself says he heard the phone before, but says it’s just static electricity.
- He’s in denial.
- The Black Phone is a way for the ghosts to communicate with Finn, but only people with the powers can hear the ghosts and the ringing itself, so i believe The Grabber is just like Finn and his sister: He can sees things, and he can hear things.
Mostly ghosts. Gwen is beaten up by her father because she keeps saying her dreams are real, we find out he wants her to stop believing in her paranormal powers, because her mother believed in them and she ended up taking her own life. I believe The Grabber was abused by his father as well, because of his powers.
He became traumatized and started to deny them. He kidnaps boys and plays the “Naughty boy game”, because that’s what his father did to him. He wants to release all that pent up rage and resentment he has towards his father, upon his victims. That’s his origin story. Now about his mask, i feel like there’s something more going on there, because of the way he reacted when Finn pulled it off.
All i can think right now is that the mask represents his father’s expressions. When he puts on the mask, he feels empowered. He feels like he has become his father. But when Finn forcefully removed the mask, maybe The Grabber felt like a kid again, a scared little boy about to be beaten by his father.
Is the Grabber evil?
What Makes Him Close to Being Pure Evil? –
He abducted five teenagers and imprisoned them in his basement behind his brother’s back, before killing them and burying them in the house across the street. After killing one of the kids, he stole a lock from their bike and used it to lock the front door. He kidnapped Finney and imprisoned him in his basement. Even though he promised he won’t hurt him and gave him food and drink, it wasn’t out of honor. Though he left the basement door unlocked to allow Finney to escape, he was actually waiting for him to come over so he could beat him in a game of “Naughty Boy”. When Finney tried to escape that night, he furiously caught him and forced him to keep his mouth shut if he screams so he wouldn’t get caught. He later imprisoned him back in his basement. He killed his brother Max after he opens the basement door to save Finney. He tried to kill Finney out of rage for “making” him murder his brother before he got strangled to death by him.
How did the Grabber take Finney?
But before Finney can escape, the man grabs him, doses him with some kind of substance, and places him in the back of his van. With nobody around to notice the abduction, Finney is now at the mercy of the Grabber, the deranged psychopath who has already killed a number of children in the local area.
What did The Grabber do to Vance Hopper?
Death – At some point during the film, Vance ends up encountering, who abducts him. After Vance tries and fails to escape by smashing a hole in the basement wall, the Grabber kills him offscreen. : “Pinball” Vance Hopper
What did The Grabber do to Bruce?
Background – Bruce learning to play baseball with his father Bruce was born in the United States and was raised by a Japanese born father,, and mother. At some point, he moved to North Denver, USA. as a child, he developed his love of baseball and his bond with his parents, before being kidnapped and murdered by, Bruce also had a younger sister named, who was a classmate of Finney’s sister,
What did The Grabber spray in Finney’s mouth?
THE BLACK PHONE NOTE: This spoiler was submitted by Jeremy Denver, CO, 1978 – Kids and parents are gathered for a little league baseball game. Finney Blake (Mason Thames) is pitching, with his sister Gwen (Madeleine McGraw) chewing him on. Finney manages to throw two balls that get strikes, but on the third, another player, Bruce Yamada (Tristan Pravong), hits the ball and scores a home run, letting his team win.
- Despite the loss, Bruce commends Finney for his arm.
- Bruce is later seen riding his bike around town, greeting some girls from school along the way.
- Then a black van pulls up in front of Bruce, and he stops in his tracks.
- Finney and Gwen live with their father (Jeremy Davies), an abusive alcoholic still mourning the loss of his wife and the kids’ mother after she committed suicide.
As the siblings start walking to school, they see a crowd of kids gathered as the school bully Moose (J Gaven Wilde) is antagonizing another kid named Robin Arellano (Miguel Cazarez Mora). To everyone’s surprise, Robin is skilled at fighting and dominates Moose, beating his face to a bloody pulp.
Finney and Gwen keep walking, with Gwen mentioning a local kidnapped known only as “The Grabber” (Ethan Hawke), since they have learned that Bruce has gone missing. At school, Finney is bullied by three boys who follow him into the bathroom and call him names. Robin enters and threatens the bullies if they mess with Finney.
Robin also encourages Finney to stand up for himself. Meanwhile, two detectives (E Roger Mitchell and Troy Rudeseal) come to the school and speak to Gwen in the principal’s office. Gwen claims she has dreams relating to the missing children taken by The Grabber, but she cannot explain the meaning behind these dreams.
- The next day, Finney wakes up to find his father beating Gwen because of the cops visiting his job and asking questions regarding Gwen’s dreams and the correlation between that and Bruce’s disappearance.
- Gwen breaks her dad’s liquor bottle, and he beats her harder.
- He orders Gwen to say that her dreams are not real, as her mother had similar dreams that were believed to be premonitions.
Later on, Robin is riding his bike around the neighborhood. He then turns the corner and finds The Grabber waiting for him, holding black balloons (which were also reported as being seen when Bruce went missing). Parents around the neighborhood are informed about Robin’s disappearance.
- The bullies at school then go after Finney and start to beat him, but Gwen defends him by whacking one bully over the head with a rock, causing him to bleed a lot.
- Gwen gets kicked in the face, and the other two bullies continue to beat Finney.
- Later during class, Finney is paired up with his crush Donna (Rebecca Clarke) as his science partner.
She offers sympathies for Finney getting beaten. Finney splits from Gwen as they walk home, and he encounters The Grabber’s van. He poses as a regular man spilling his groceries, but once Finney spots the black balloons, The Grabber attacks Finney and sprays his mouth with a chemical to knock him out before he’s thrown into the van.
Gwen and other kids from school soon learn that Finney is missing. The Grabber brings Finney to his basement and keeps him prisoner. There is only one window but no way for anyone to hear him if he screams. The Grabber taunts Finney but assures him he’s “special.” On the wall is a black phone that is disconnected, which The Grabber claims to have heard ringing before.
Later, the phone rings again, and Finney answers it. He hears the voice of Bruce, who notes Finney’s arm in baseball, calling it “mint”. However, Bruce doesn’t remember his own name or what he did when he was alive. Bruce gives Finney a tip about a space in the floor where he can move a tile and begin digging.
- Finney spends his time digging and flushing the dirt down the toilet.
- Gwen has a dream where she sees a flashback of Bruce’s life from childhood, and his developing interest in baseball. Mr.
- Blake talks to Gwen, saying that her mother would talk about having dreams that are visions just like Gwen does, and he thinks this drove her to commit suicide, so he wants to prevent Gwen from falling down the same path.
The Grabber brings Finney eggs and a Sprite, assuring him the food is clean. He also leaves the door unlocked, but as Finney walks toward it, he hears the phone ringing again, and he hears the voice of a local paperboy named Billy (Jacob Moran. While talking to Finney, his ghost appears next to him, his face having been slashed by The Grabber.
- Billy tells Finney that the unlocked door is a trap, and The Grabber will be waiting upstairs for him with a knife.
- Billy mentions a cable he left in a crack under the wall.
- Finney grabs a rolled up mat and slides the cable up to the window bars and attempts to climb his way out, but his weight causes the bars to get pulled off, leaving him with no way to get back up.
Another flashback/dream shows Billy’s life as a paperboy, delivering with his dog before The Grabber got him. The detectives go around the neighborhood and speak to a man named Max (James Ransone), who is doing his own investigation into the missing kids.
- He tells the detectives that he is staying with his brother for the time being.
- Meanwhile, Gwen tries to take whatever info she can from her dreams to try and find her brother.
- The Grabber asks Finney his name, but when he lies about it, he throws Finney a newspaper showing the news of his disappearance.
When he leaves, the phone rings again, and Finney speaks to a boy named Griffin (Michael Banks Repeta). His ghost appears floating beside Finney, and Griffin tells him about a lock combination that he had written down. This is part of a game The Grabber likes to play with his victims called “Naughty Boy”.
Finney finds the numbers, but Griffin cannot remember the exact combo. While The Grabber is sleeping, Finney sneaks upstairs and tries every combo he can think of until he unlocks the door. Unfortunately, The Grabber’s dog Samson barks at the sound of the unlocking, which wakes up The Grabber. Finney runs out of the house and only makes it barely down the street before The Grabber catches him.
Neighbors turn on their lights, but The Grabber threatens to kill Finney right then and there if he makes a sound. He waits until the lights turn off before taking Finney back. The phone rings again later, but this time, Finney hears the voice of a local punk named Vance Hopper (Brady Hepner).
- A flashback/dream shows Vance at an arcade where he fought with two kids after one of them messed with his high score.
- He was arrested shorty after.
- In the flashback, Gwen finds herself alongside Vance, who is talking to Finney through the police radio, but Finney cannot hear Gwen calling out to him.
- They end up at a house, where Gwen tries to remember the number.
She later rides her bike through the area to find the house and is spooked by the ghosts of The Grabber’s victims. Finney listens to Vance’s “advice” and finds a space behind the wall where there is a freezer. Finney tries to push through the door as hard as he can, but to no avail.
- He begins crying, fearing that he will die there.
- The phone rings one more time, and he answers.
- It’s Robin, and he remembers both Finney and his own life.
- He tells Finney that he was always his friend, and that now is the time that he really needs to stand up for himself.
- Robin tells Finney to practice using the phone as a weapon and to fill the receiver with dirt to add some heft to it.
Gwen contacts the detectives and goes with them to the address she saw in her dreams. While this happens, Max comes to the conclusion that the missing kids are in the house he is staying in – because The Grabber is his brother. He goes to the basement and is shocked to find Finney there.
- Just as Max attempts to help, The Grabber kills him with an axe to the head.
- He goes after Finney, but the boy has utilized all the help from the ghost kids at his disposal.
- He sets up a rug over the hole he dug, using the cable to trip The Grabber and drop him into the hole, where he breaks his ankle after it hits the bars from the window.
Finney then begins wailing on The Grabber with the phone, and it rings one last time. Finney forces The Grabber to hear the voices of his victims taunting him over his demise, and Finney snaps his neck. He grabs a steak from the freezer and throws it to Samson to keep him distracted.
- The detectives search the house, but find it empty until one officer finds the basement.
- Instead of finding Finney, the detectives find the bodies of the other five boys buried in the dirt.
- The house where Finney was being held is across the street.
- He unlocks the door and steps out into the sun, where Gwen sees him and runs to her brother.
The authorities take care of the kids, and they are picked up by their father, who tearfully apologizes to both of them for how he treated them. Finney returns to school more confident than before. The other kids see him as a legend for killing The Grabber, and the bullies no longer dare to mess with him.
*CUT TO THE CHASE* Brought to you by
In Denver in the late 70’s, a serial killer known as The Grabber kidnaps five boys. The sixth boy, Finney Blake, is kept in his basement and overhears a disconnected phone on the wall ringing. He hears the voices of The Grabber’s victims, all of whom give him tips on how to survive and escape.
- Meanwhile, Finney’s sister Gwen attempts to find her brother with the help of her dreams, as she sees visions of real world events.
- Finney makes one escape attempt but is quickly caught by The Grabber.
- Gwen manages to find the address to the house in one of her dreams and leads detectives to the house.
The Grabber’s brother Max finds out that Finney is being kept in the basement of his house, but The Grabber kills Max before he can free him. Finney utilizes all the assets that the dead kids gave him so he can take on The Grabber. He traps him in a hole that he dug and he uses the phone filled with dirt to beat The Grabber before strangling him and snapping his neck.
Why did The Grabber cover his face?
Here’s everything The Black Phone reveals about The Grabber’s creepy mask, why he wears it, and the deeper meaning behind why he covers his face. The Black Phone Grabber mask has a deeper meaning than it seems. Though The Grabber’s mask seems as though it shares some commonality with other masked horror villains, the way he employs it as a changeable piece distinguishes The Grabber from his contemporaries.
Sometimes The Grabber wears it with a wide and unsettling rictus, sometimes it features a deep frown, and sometimes it’s completely blank and empty. The Grabber even opts to sometimes wear just the top of the mask, allowing his expression to be seen or, in a key scene, just the bottom piece, freezing the bottom of his face in the grin while violently threatening the film’s protagonist, Finney.
Unlike many horror villains who use their masks to hide their identity, The Black Phone ‘s Grabber breaks a horror rule and is sometimes seen partially or fully without it. While his mask is important to his identity, it doesn’t exist to conceal it from others.
Instead, The Grabber employs the mask as a sort of theater — the different Grabber mask variations each represent characters in a show he’s putting on for himself and his victims. A few scenes in The Black Phone suggest yet another motivation for his mask: he uses it to hide from himself out of shame for his actions.
Here’s why The Grabber mask is so iconic despite The Black Phone only releasing in 2022.