“Dead is just a word,” or so says “The Grabber” in the trailer for Black Phone 2.

Even dead, the monster behind the child abductions and murders from 2022’s Black Phone is still a menace. Even worse, he’s been studying the techniques of other horror movie slashers for a new campaign of terror against the kids behind his demise.

For Black Phone 2, The Grabber, played by Ethan Hawke as in the first film, gets resurrected from Horror Movie Monster Hell and sets his sights on Finn (Mason Thames) and Gwen (Madeleine McGraw), the kids who were his downfall in the original, but being dead, he can’t just snatch them again.

Instead, he comes to Gwen in her dreams, à la Nightmare on Elm Street‘s Freddy Krueger, communicates via creepy prank phone calls to Finn like Scream‘s Ghostface, and lures the kids out to an abandoned summer campsite (albeit in the dead of winter) like the second coming of Friday the 13th‘s Jason. He also enlarged upon the special skills section of his résumé by becoming an actual ghost, a zombie, and an axe murderer too.

The movie’s official description reads (in part), “The Grabber seeks vengeance on Finn from beyond the grave by menacing Finn’s younger sister, Gwen. As Finn, now 17, struggles with life after his captivity, the headstrong 15-year-old Gwen begins receiving calls in her dreams from the black phone and seeing disturbing visions of three boys being stalked at a winter camp known as Alpine Lake. Determined to solve the mystery and end the torment for both her and her brother, Gwen…and Finn must confront a killer who has grown more powerful in death and more significant to them than either could imagine.”

Black Phone 2 comes from Blumhouse via Universal, and is directed by Scott Derrickson, who co-wrote the script with C. Robert Cargill. Miguel Mora, Jeremy Davies, Demián Bichir, and Arianna Rivas reprise their Black Phone roles and are joined by Maev Beaty and Graham Abbey for the sequel.

You can answer the call when Black Phone 2 rings into theaters on October 17th.