Why The Black Phone's Villain Breaks A Cardinal Horror Killer Rule
Warning: This article contains spoilers for The Black Phone.
Ethan Hawke plays a masked serial killer known as «The Grabber» in The Black Phone — and he breaks a horror movie rule as old the genre itself. The Black Phone has received positive reviews from both critics and audiences, with Hawke's performance as the creepy and unforgivable Grabber being widely lauded. The masked killer is not only performed well but also written in a way that breaks a horror convention that has stood for decades.
Across the runtime of The Black Phone, The Grabber is seen both in and out of his mask. He isn't wearing it when he abducts Finney (Mason Thames), and it becomes apparent that he changes its look and expression from scene to scene. In some scenes, he only wears the top half of the mask, allowing his face to emote but his eyes to be covered. In one notable scene, he removes the top half to chase Finney out of the house during an escape attempt, leaving the bottom half of the mask fixed to his face in a creepy rictus.
Related: Does The Black Phone Have An After Credits Scene?
By The Black Phone's ending, it's evident that The Grabber is different than other masked villains in horror films. He doesn't seem to be at all supernatural, and he isn't as worried about covering his identity as he appears to be about sending a message to, or instilling fear in, his victims. There's an unwritten rule that masked villains tend to follow in horror movies — namely that their masks stay on. These masks tend to be emblematic of their identity, power, and terror, which they are often robbed of when unmasked in their respective films' codas. In contrast, the Grabber's mask is still a piece of his identity, but it's moldable and modular — he controls
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