Universal Pictures
The most important question to ask about any horror movie is: is it scary?
Let’s get it out of the way: The Black Phone is scary. Relying very little on the go-to tropes of modern-day horror trash, like jump scares or graphic gore (though there’s a little of both for good measure), the movie instead uses things that scare you in real life to make the chills down your spine run deep.
There is probably no truer real-life horror that terrifies children, taunts parents, or paralyzes communities than a serial child abductor.
Stranger danger.
The van. The candy. Then poof.
It’s terrifying.
To tell you too much of the plot of The Black Phone would be to ruin the good work that the folks at Blumhouse and Universal have done to keep things under wraps. They’ve gone as far as resorting to the classic horror marketing technique of showing audiences in hidden camera night vision jumping out of their seats in terror. (And yes, it is that scary. And yes, you will have a great theatrical experience if you see it with a crowd. Horror audiences are always the most full on opening night — for maximum screams.)
Based on the short story of the same name by Joe Hill, The Black Phone takes place in Colorado in 1973. Ethan Hawke plays The Grabber, a serial child abductor who disguises himself behind a collection of creepy masks. He drives his black utility van around empty suburban neighborhoods until he finds a little boy walking home alone. He takes the boy and leaves behind a bundle of black balloons as a calling card: The Grabber has gotten another.
At the start of the film, five or six boys have disappeared. And you don’t say his name on the schoolyard, saying it might summon him.
When Finney, a boy whose classmates and friends have been kidnapped, gets picked up by The Grabber disguised as something like a birthday clown, he must do everything he can to not go permanently missing like those that came before him.
Finney is played by Mason Thames, a young man with a bright future. He pairs well with Madeleine McGraw as his sister, Gwen, who might just have a special gift that could come in handy when it comes to missing brothers. Horror films led by child actors can be a mixed bag, but they’ve got two good ones here.
The real star of the picture, however, is Ethan Hawke.
Hawke had no interest in playing the character at first, not wanting to be known for a scary performance. He eventually changed his mind, of course, saying that in his older age, ‘Villains might be my future.’
He was right, this performance is career-defining in a career with many excellent performances. Despite hiding his face behind a mask, Hawke is still expressive, breathy, and intimidating. And he does it all without being flashy or over the top. It’s realistic, yet devilishly distinct.
If this is Hawke’s future, we would be so lucky. He’s frightening.
The movie reunites Hawke with director/co-writer Scott Derrickson and co-writer C. Robert Cargill after working with the pair on the 2012 horror film Sinister. That film, another Blumhouse venture, is also quite scary, but received quite a bit of criticism for falling into some of those modern horror traps, particularly jump scares. Although that collaboration was a successful one, you can see their attempts to avoid those cliches in The Black Phone.
The film is also faithful to its source material, giving the filmmakers a solid groundwork for a classically scary picture.
Inspired by some of the more familiar horror tropes, no doubt the team behind the movie found inspiration in many of the films you know, love, and have been terrified by.
There’s some Freddy in there with some reassigned supernatural stuff. There’s some Halloween in there with the aggressively 1970s setting – looking over your shoulder for a boogeyman. Find the Pennywise from It inspiration as kidnapped kids try to figure out how to face their deepest fears. A Stranger Things comparison is apt, not only for the homage to nostalgic cinema, but the visual and aesthetic style. Throwing it way back to the 1920s, you can even see some mask design inspiration from Lon Chaney in 1927’s London After Midnight.
If you like these movies, you’ll find something to like in The Black Phone. If you like being scared, there’s even more to love. If you like tense, edge-of-your-seat thrilling horror movies (I was literally on the edge of my seat from the halfway point on), you’ll really like this theatrical experience.
The Black Phone has a run time of 1 hour 42 minutes, and is rated R for violence, bloody images, language and some drug use.
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