Finney

That is a bold premise and it is exactly the kind of nightmare logic that horror fans love.

Mason Thames and Madeline McGraw reprise their roles as Finney, now 17, and Gwen, now 15, the siblings who survived the first film's horrors and are now older, tougher, and still haunted.

This time, Gwen receives dream calls from the Black Phone, a chilling twist on the original's premise, and those calls lead the siblings to a winter camp called Alpine Lake.

A winter camp, a haunted phone, dream calls from beyond the grave— If you are a horror fan, you are already buying a ticket in your head.

Ethan Hawke also stars in this one as The Grabber, a 1970s serial killer who kidnaps children and locks them in his basement.

Mason Thames, then an unknown, plays Finney, his latest kidnap victim, and Madeline McGraw plays his younger sister Gwen.

The Black Phone relies on atmosphere and dread, not jump scares, and it's both a great horror movie and a great thriller.

The movie's name comes from a disconnected phone in the basement that allows the grabber's previous victims to talk to Finney from the afterlife and help him figure out how to escape from the grabber before he's killed.

Ethan Hawke is supremely creepy, mostly wearing a mask with a detachable face that changes according to his mood, a mask that was designed by legendary horror effects guru Tom Savini.

And both Madeleine McGraw and Mason Thames put in great performances in a movie that needs its young leads to deliver.

There are no light fixtures, but given that a chunk of the film is set in the grabber's basement, we get super served on storage space.

Did The Black Phone need a sequel? Not really, but we got one last year with Black Phone 2, which I have to credit for not taking the easy route and just remaking the first movie, but going for a prequel.

Which also translated into real life.

Which is weird because Finney was grabbing him and smashing his head on the ice.

Yeah.

But you couldn't see him?

Yeah, like...

I want to be clear.

I'm going to say Finney went in first for the first one and Finn for the second one.

Flashbacks.

Right.

And Mason Thames' Finney is going to be his next victim.

So he's already captured him.

He's in the basement.

But then this rotary phone on the wall starts ringing.

And as Finney answers it, it's the ghosts of the children that have already perished.

Oh, God.

And they're trying to save him.