Movie Review--The Black Phone

"With the door shut, no one can hear anything down here.  I soundproofed it myself.  So shout if you like.  You won't bother anyone."

--The Grabber, The Black Phone

The Black Phone, like Doctor Sleep before it, is an incredible horror accomplishment.  If anyone is struck by how similar it is in some ways to films based on Stephen King's writings, that is because the short story The Black Phone adapts is from Stephen King's son Joe Hill.  Doctor Sleep has much in common with it: both feature child protagonists, explicitly supernatural elements, excellent production values, and optimistic conclusions that follow very dark events.  Since Doctor Sleep is an absolute masterpiece, that The Black Phone mirrors its best qualities means it too is an artistic triumph.  Director Scott Derickson helms yet another great film that stands favorably next to Sinister and Doctor Strange.  Ethan Hawke's villain serves as one of the key pillars of the movie, and Hawke gets to revel in the ambiguity around his character.  A simple yet highly focused and deep film, this latest project to be directed by Derrickson affirms again how talented he is with handling horror.

Production Values

As one might expect from Derrickson, there are some jumpscares, but as is the case with the best horror movies that use them, they are not constantly strung together so that it becomes easy to tell when one is probably about to arrive, and they are not used to replace the atmosphere created by the acting, the general cinematography, and the themes of the story.  The Black Phone is superb in its atmosphere and in how the core characters are explored throughout the film.  Regarding both, all sorts of plot points from throughout the movie become crucial to how a climactic scene, to the point where the full narrative significance might not even hit attentive viewers until after they have finished watching.  It also helps that the cast is excellent the whole time.  Mason Thames and Madelein McGraw join the increasingly large pool of incredible child actors in Stephen King or Stephen King-related films.  Because of such movies, the normal quality of child acting in horror has dramatically increased as of late.  Then there is Ethan Hawke, who, having played the villain in Moon Knight earlier this year, gets the chance to become a far more personally insidious character, conveying simultaneous ambiguity and seeming brokenness (as I get into below, the character seems to have suffered abuse as a child).  That so much in one sense and so little in another sense is revealed about him makes the mystery all the more clever.

Story

Some spoilers are below.

Young Finney Blake is abducted by a figure called "the Grabber" who has recently kidnapped multiple children, awakening in a large basement with a disconnected black rotary phone on the wall.  His kidnapper says that the phone does not work, yet Finney gets periodic calls from spirits of other victims.  They give him information on various escape possibilities despite none of the attempts succeeding.  Meanwhile, Finney's sister Gwen has been experiencing seeming psychic dreams so relevant to the Grabber's activities that the police use her as an informant, as she has seen things in her dreams like the black balloons left at the abduction sites despite this information never being given to the public.  Finney tries option after option to escape his captor, who becomes increasingly threatening.

Intellectual Content

There are a handful of more subtle philosophical issues that The Black Phone tackles, such as whether a girl's psychic dreams are the result of God granting her special perception (which makes this a great fit for Scott Derickson as a horror director who is also a Christian) or why adults might kidnap children.  At first, it seems like the Grabber might kidnap young boys for sexual reasons, yet despite a few comments that are consistent with this being or not being the motivation, he never does anything sexual that we see.  His ideological or personal motivations are left in the dark, but there are hints that the Grabber was perhaps himself abused as a child, given his fixation on children and on punishment.  The psychological reason for his desperation to cover his face with a mask to at least some extent is also not explained, though it is a very significant part of the story.  Regardless of what the Grabber's motives were, The Black Phone is able to use the premise of a child abduction to lead to an ending that is about empowering children, not unlike It or Doctor Sleep.

Conclusion

As with Sinister before it, Scott Derrickson shows his sheer competence with handling the horror genre in another modern horror classic that parallels the Stephen King adaptations of recent years.  The main performances and the examination of how resourceful children can be are crucial because of the very personal scale of the film, and the primary and supporting cast members alike make the most of their time onscreen.  The Black Phone is an instance where simplicity is not a negative trait of art, but a strength, a pillar that masterfully elevates the story and its themes.  In an age of interconnected franchises, which are of course not of poor quality by default no matter how much some hate them, it also is a reminder of how standalone films can indeed stand strong on their own and how horror is a very fitting genre to set up in this way.

Content:

 1.  Violence:  A few scenes involve brutal fistfights.

 2.  Profanity:  Words like "fuck" and "shit" are used.