Scott Derrickson Talks About Ethan Hawke's Evil Character the Grabber in THE BLACK PHONE

Director Scott Derrickson’s The Black Phone is an incredible horror movie, the best I’ve seen this year! I loved this film and Ethan Hawke offered a sinister performance as the main evil villain, the Grabber.

Hawke broke one of his rules as an actor when taking this role. Hawke has made it very clear over the course of his career that he doesn’t play villains. But, after he read the script for the film, he immediately jumped on board. Derrickson recently talked to /Film and explained:

"First of all, the experience of Sinister was a really positive one for him [Hawke]. He had never done a horror film before, and I think he really realized on set that he didn't really know much about how to make a movie like that, and the distinctiveness of timing. And so we made a good film, and I think he's really proud of that movie.

“So when I offered him the role he told me, he said, ‘I probably won't do it. I don't do villains,’ which it didn't really occur to me, but he really doesn't. But he read the script and loved it and said, 'Yes.'"

The Grabber is a sadistic killer who kidnaps and murders kids in his soundproof basement. In this story, he kidnaps a shy but clever 13-year-old named Finney, and while trying to survive in the basement, 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 him.

The director went on to offer some insight on the Grabber, who is meant to represent "one of the monsters that are out there in the world." He explained:

"I think that he's [the Grabber] meant to be a realistic monster. He's meant to be one of the monsters that are out there in the world...The idea of giving him some backstory that sort of explained why he is the way he is was ridiculous to me. I felt like he needed to be a mystery. And that the power and danger of him would be in the mystery. And to me, the best screen villains are like that. The power is in the performance. The power is in the uniqueness and the peculiarity of what they do."

I liked that we didn’t really know any about this monster. There are little hints thrown out there over the course of the story, but his backstory is not fleshed out in the movie, and it doesn’t need to be. It’s more terrifying not knowing how this guy came to be so evil. I love the mystery of it! It’s one of the things that makes the villain so compelling.

The Black Phone hits theaters on June 24, 2022.