‘The Black Phone’ Director Shares Tom Savini’s Original Grabber Sketches!
An important detail often overlooked when discussing Blumhouse’s The Black Phone (2021) and its sequel is that the Grabber’s mask was designed by none other than horror effects legend Tom Savini, whose credits include Friday the 13th, Dawn of the Dead, and Creepshow.
The Grabber has gone viral over the past week for what many say is an uncanny resemblance to Jeffrey Epstein – a disturbing real-world parallel. While director Scott Derrickson has shot down any relation between the two, he used the moment to share the initial mask designs he received from Tom Savini.
As seen below, the original design and what ended up on screen are quite similar, though it’s interesting to imagine what The Grabber might have looked like with a frown.
Academy Award nominee Ethan Hawke (Sinister, Boyhood, Training Day), in the most disturbing role of his career, stars as The Grabber in The Black Phone, based on the short story by Joe Hill (“Locke & Key,” Horns).
In the film, Finney, a shy but clever 13-year-old boy, is abducted by a sadistic killer (Hawke) 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.
Here are the original drawings of The Grabber masks by the great Tom Savini. Adding a mouthless mask and splitting them in half were ideas that came to me later in preproduction: pic.twitter.com/lXl6MyH2G3
— N O S ⋊ Ɔ I ᴚ ᴚ Ǝ ᗡ ⊥ ⊥ O Ɔ S (@scottderrickson) February 22, 2026
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