The Halloween franchise's misstep with Michael Myers is skillfully avoided in The Black Phone. Ethan Hawke plays The Grabber in The Black phone, a serial murderer who kidnaps kids and locks them in his soundproof basement. The Grabber is just a scary and terrible person, similar to Michael Myers in the first Halloween, even if The Black phone is filled with supernatural themes.

The Grabber's background is mostly left unexplored in The Black phone, leaving the figure shrouded in mystery. Audiences are left to ponder what led him to be the way he is in addition to seeing him in a villainous capacity and getting a sense of his insane state. The background of Michael Myers, in comparison, is pretty explicit, although there is little information provided regarding his objectives. In Halloween, the intrigue surrounding him focuses more on his motivations and the reasons he's so difficult to eliminate. While his backstory is gradually exposed throughout the film, Michael Myers approaches the first Halloween as a recognisable human figure.

There are numerous timelines in the Halloween movies that show various iterations of the killer, yet the first movie makes no mention of Michael Myers' supernatural prowess. The notion that a villain need not be a demon or a monster to be hazardous, unpleasant, and terrible makes him more frightful. The Grabber is portrayed as an everyday person in The Black phone, save from his propensity for kidnapping and killing children. Because they symbolise a dread that is more prevalent and grounded in reality than monsters or the paranormal, The Grabber and Michael Myers are both intriguing horror antagonists. Making Michael Myers supernatural was a mistake for the Halloween franchise because it made it impossible for the viewers to accept that someone like him could actually exist.