Is The Black Phone based on a true story?

Is The Black Phone based on a true story? Ethan Hawke’s terrifying horror movie is on Amazon Prime now, but is it based on real events?

The Black Phone, directed by Scott Derrickson and co-written with C. Robert Cargill, was one of the best horror movies of 2021, right up there with Malignant, the Fear Street movies, and The Night House.

Adapted from a short story by Joe Hill, the son of Stephen King, it revolves around a 1970s suburb caught in a spate of child abductions by “The Grabber” (Ethan Hawke), and a young boy (Mason Thames) who falls into his grasp and has to find a way to beat him.

With people rewatching the movie and discovering it for the first time, you may be wondering: is The Black Phone based on a true story? Well, we have the answer.

Is The Black Phone based on a true story?

Here’s the really scary bit: while The Black Phone isn’t based on a true story, it is inspired by real events.

In an interview with Vanity Fair, Hill explained how his story isn’t based on a single case, instead inspired by the likes of John Wayne Gacy – while he worked as a part-time clown, the Grabber masquerades as a magician.

“When I wrote The Black Phone, it had been 20 years since I read [It] and 15 years since I’d seen the TV movie and I never thought of It at all. It never crossed my mind once,” he said.

Universal Pictures

“What I was thinking about were the more notorious child killers from American history. And the first one that springs to mind, the one that’s inescapable, is John Wayne Gacy – who was a part-time clown.”

The movie mostly stays true to the source material, but Derrickson used his own childhood to build out Finney’s character and backstory with his abusive father.

“I grew up in an area of North Denver that was pretty violent, a lot of bullying, a lot of fighting, a lot of kids were bleeding all the time,” the director told news.com.au.

“It was also right after Ted Bundy had come through Colorado, killing people. And the Manson murders had just happened… there was a lot of domestic violence, even in my own home and in the homes of a lot of these kids that I knew.

“Parents punished children much more aggressively, and so it was a very violent, scary kind of place to grow up in a lot of ways. And I tried to bring that environment realistically into the movie.”

The Black Phone is available to stream on Amazon Prime Video now. You can sign up here.

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