The Black Phone is a 2021 American supernatural horror film directed by Scott Derrickson from a screenplay he wrote with C. Robert Cargill, based on the 2004 short story by Joe Hill. It is the first installment in the Black Phone franchise. It stars Mason Thames as Finney, a teenage boy abducted by a serial child killer known colloquially as the Grabber (Ethan Hawke). When Finney encounters a mystical black rotary phone in captivity, he uses it to plot his escape by communicating with the ghosts of the Grabber's slain victims.