Middle school student Finney is already being terrorized by his father and severely bullied at school, so being kidnapped and locked in a soundproof room underground is the last thing he needs. He soon learns that the perpetrator is a masked child abductor on the loose in North Denver, whom the newspapers have dubbed “the Grabber” because of the way he snatches children off the streets.

The Grabber met Finney on his way home, disguised as a wizard, before ambushing him with a bunch of black balloons and stunning him with helium to keep him from screaming. He had already arrived at Finney’s friend Robin’s home before him. During Finney’s captivity, Robin and others speaking to Finney from the grave via the titular phone in the Grabber’s basement give him advice on how to defeat the villain and escape with his life.

Where is the Grabber’s basement?

From the moment Finney meets the Grabber, we realize he is a different person from the other characters in the film. We see him for the first time in the flesh without a mask, played by Hawke with a strange mix of the mindless brutality typical of many masked killers from the horror genre and Buffalo Bill’s perverse compulsion to toy with his victims The Silence of the Lambs.

But we are also led to believe that Finney’s abusive father, Terrence, may be involved in the Grabber’s crimes, especially after he mercilessly beats Finney’s sister Gwen for daring to tell the authorities about her dreams involving the Grabber. His habit of mistreating his own children, however, turns out to be a red herring, distracting us from the real accomplice in the Grabber’s crimes.

A powder-snorting ne’er-do-well named Max poses as an amateur criminal who is closely following the case and offers to help the police. In fact, he is the brother of the serial killer who kidnapped the children.

Gwen has a vision of Max’s house and the Grabber, which eventually leads the police to the crime scene. But not before Finney has taken care of the Grabber himself. Hero.

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