Ethan Hawke Is Back From the Dead in ‘Black Phone 2’ Trailer

Death is apparently not the end in Black Phone 2. In a new trailer for the horror sequel, from filmmaker Scott Derrickson, Ethan Hawke‘s serial killer the Grabber seems to have been resurrected.

In the trailer, The Black Phone star Mason Thames returns as Finney, who is now in high school. Although he survived his abduction by the Grabber thanks to help of ghosts at the other end of a mysterious phone, his nemesis has returned. “You of all people should know that dead is just a word,” the Grabber tells Finney in the clip.

Black Phone 2 stars Hawke, Thames, Madeleine McGraw, Jeremy Davies, and Miguel Mora. It was written by C. Robert Cargill and Derrickson (the original was based on a short story by Joe Hill, the son of Stephen King). Derrickson told The Hollywood Reporter that the film switches up the idea of ghosts.

“The first movie was a ghost movie but all the ghosts were victims, which is typical, a ghost story,” he said. “But in this one, you’ve got a ghost that is a villain.”

He added, “A middle school coming-of-age horror movie is a different animal than a high school coming-of-age horror film. There’s a ratcheting up of intensity because of that. … It is certainly more violent, scarier, more graphic. And part of that is because of the age of the kids.”

The Black Phone was released in 2022. Rolling Stone noted in a review of the film, “Hawke brings a certain spooky nonchalance to the role, conveying the mundanity of evil through the uninflected naturalism of his delivery. But he’s playing a rather low-concept psychopath, too lethargic to develop much of a gimmick or even the impression of a fearsomely fucked-up pathology.”