It stars Mason Thames as Finney, a teenage boy abducted by a serial child killer known colloquially as The Grabber (Ethan Hawke).

Universal Pictures oversaw the film's commercial distribution, and funding was sourced through a Universal–Blumhouse co-production pact and tax subsidies from the North Carolina state government.

Meanwhile, Finney Blake and his younger sister Gwen live in the area with their abusive, alcoholic father Terrence, whose wife died by suicide after having a series of disturbing psychic dreams.

At Billy's suggestion, Finney uses a hidden length of cable to climb up to the basement window; however, his weight pulls out the grate covering the pane, leaving him with no way to reach it again.

As Gwen confides to Terrence about her dreams of Finney's abduction, Wright and Miller question an eccentric man named Max who is staying in the area with his brother and has shown great interest in the Grabber's crimes.

Finney receives a call from Griffin, a third victim, who gives him the combination to the lock securing the house's front door and tells him that the Grabber has fallen asleep.

Finney uses the byproducts from his previous escape attempts to trap the Grabber in a pit he has dug, beats him with the receiver, and breaks his neck with the phone cord as his past victims taunt him.

The Black Phone emerged from filmmakers Scott Derrickson and C. Robert Cargill's adaptation of Joe Hill's short story of the same name, published in the horror anthology 20th Century Ghosts (2005).

[4] The director was eager to conceive a film faithful to "The Black Phone", which fascinated him in its framing of a conventional serial killer story, but struggled to produce ideas of his own devising.

[4][5] He shelved the project to focus on his professional relationship with Cargill, forged from Sinister (2012), and his contractual obligations to Marvel Studios as director of Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness (2022).

[8] He gleaned from people in his everyday life to shape the characters, their circumstances, and the film's depiction of suburbia, including a child whose mother was raped, murdered, and disposed of in a lake wrapped in phone wire.

[10] They ultimately hired Mason Thames and Madeleine McGraw as the first significant casting choices,[11][12] from auditions conducted on Zoom as a result of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic.

[5][13] McGraw was considered among four actresses, and when a prior commitment to Disney's television series Secrets of Sulphur Springs forced her to pull out, the producers postponed filming of The Black Phone by several months to accommodate her schedule.

[14] Even though Thames lacked acting experience, The Black Phone being his film debut, he reportedly stood apart from others in his ability to emote and take direction.

VFX Legion then developed a digital model of the actor from a 3D scan animated with retopologized graphics and textures, allowing them to employ ragdoll physics for fluid movement.

This was a labor intensive process because the filmmakers wanted the movement of the digital model to project a loss of control, and the stunt's combined animation to be slow enough to show that the victim was being forced into a void.

[30] Another challenging sequence saw VFX Legion modify in-home tracking shots with CGI, which entailed altering the frame rate of footage to maintain a continuously steady speed.

Savini and Baker were engaged to handle the creation of up to 30 masks for gags, stunts, specific scenes, and pandemic mitigation, in a process that lasted a month.

[32] The fully realized concept surfaced from Savini's original sketches, at which point the filmmakers began contemplating age, consistency, and the application of each mask.

Derrickson outlined the film's pastiche musical approach in early conversations, calling for a score drawing on modern and vintage synthesizer-heavy sounds.

[46] Derrickson unveiled the theatrical release poster in conjunction with The Black Phone's Fantastic Fest premiere, sporting the tagline, "Never talk to strangers.

[53] The Black Phone was considered a box office success, as studios anticipated meager profits for theaters screening lower-budget films, closed as a consequence of COVID-19 pandemic control measures.

[55] Of this figure, $67.8 million was estimated to have been yielded by Blumhouse and Universal in net profit, factoring in advertising, production, interest, administrative overhead, residuals, and miscellaneous costs.

[59] Exit polling conducted during opening night revealed the average opinion moviegoers gave the film was positive, ranging from a B+ on CinemaScore to an 86% score on PostTrak.

[59] The following weekend saw the theater count peak to 3,156 despite box office figures dropping by 48%, and The Black Phone finished the third week as the number six film with $7.66 million.

The website's consensus reads: "The Black Phone might have been even more frightening, but it remains an entertaining, well-acted adaptation of scarily good source material.

They were inclined to compare The Black Phone to Hill's short story based on tone and style, with critics saying the film script augmented ideas faithful to the source material.

[a] Another point of notice was the script's treatment of a traditional serial killer story in the approach and period setting,[75][77] which Chicago Sun-Times stated made for "one of the better cinematic nightmares in recent years".

[78] On the other hand, the media differed over the handling of ideas, often singling out the film's supernatural elements for further scrutiny, with one review from Variety claiming its emphasis undermined tension-building in the story.

[b] Plodding characterization and pacing was ascribed to mistakes in the writing,[84] although the Los Angeles Times singled out intense basement-set conversational scenes with Finney as the film's most compelling moments.