10 Most Disappointing Villains From Recent Horror Movies

10. The Grabber - Black Phone 2

Ethan Hawke gave us an unnerving performance as a child serial killer, the Grabber, in Scott Derrickson's 2021 supernatural horror The Black Phone. 

In that first movie, the Grabber wasn't enhanced with the supernatural side of things. He could be your next-door neighbour. Your brother. The man in a black van pulling up alongside you at the traffic lights. The man you would help when he dropped his groceries on the ground. The everyman visiting a hardware store. He's someone who defines our absolute worst thoughts when we wonder what goes on behind other people's closed doors. He was a human who died at the hands of survivor Finney Blake (Mason Thames). 

Until 2025's Black Phone 2, that is.

Here, the sequel takes the Nightmare on Elm Street route, with the Grabber now a supernatural spectre seeking vengeance against an older Finn and his younger sister Gwen (Madeleine McGraw). And with the supernatural, anything goes.

Set within a Christian winter youth camp, the Grabber turns his ferocious focus on Gwen by distorting her dreams with terrifying and traumatising images of the killer's first victims. Seeing the Grabber invade Gwen's haunting dreamscape and pull her towards a fiery doom, while others look on in suspended terror, does give us the requisite heebie-jeebies.

However, in amongst the multiple rabbit hole mysteries, the one that should have been further explored is the Grabber's genesis. This was briefly touched upon and is something that Hawke himself has expressed interest in. What made the youth camp maintenance man nicknamed "Wild Bill" turn to a life of black balloons, amongst other things?