The Doctor’s Diagnosis: A
The Black Phone is my favorite movie of 2022 so far and a reminder that horror is my favorite genre despite how much I hate most modern horror films. Based on a short story by Joe Hill (aka Stephen King’s son), this is the most original horror movie that I’ve seen in years and a refreshing change of pace from the seemingly endless parade of jump-scare filled ghost and possession films that have ruled the genre for the last decade. Feeling like a cross between Tales from the Crypt and The Twilight Zone, The Black Phone is the kind of fun, scary, original and crowd-pleasing flick that horror has been missing for way too long.
Taking place in the late 70s (presumably to both eliminate cell phones and make the kid characters more independent and less insufferable), the film is about a town that is being terrorized by a child abductor called The Grabber. Our lead is a boy named Finney (who seems to be around 13-14 years old), who is abducted by The Grabber and thrown into a prison cell in the maniac’s basement. There is a disconnected black phone in this basement and Finney soon starts receiving calls from his classmates that were previously taken and killed by The Grabber, all of whom are giving him advice on how to escape and avoid their fate. You can get all of this from the trailer, but I don’t want to spoil anything else.
The trailer for The Black Phone made me think that the film would be overly serious, which makes sense considering the subject matter. However, as odd as this may sound, this probably the most crowd-pleasing film that you will ever see about a murderous child-abductor. As mentioned, it is a premise that would suit a particularly dark episode of The Twilight Zone but with the darkly-comedic tone of Tales from the Crypt. As far a theater-going experiences go, this ranks up there with Top Gun: Maverick as the most fun I’ve had this year. The large audience screamed, laughed and cheered all at the right times and it wasn’t cheap reactions either. It wasn’t a bunch of idiots yelling “oh shit!!!” every five minutes at lame jump scares. These reactions were earned by great characters, smart writing and an unnerving premise that is handled with just the right level of severity.
This absolutely feels like something that Stephen King would have written in the 70s or 80s, so it seems that Joe Hill inherited his father’s talent for effectively depicting children/kids. What makes The Black Phone so effective is the strength of the main characters and that’s not easy to do with kids. Most often with characters of this age, I would be rooting for their swift death, but that’s not the case here. Finney (played by Mason Thames) is a sympathetic, fully-developed character that you are really pulling for for the duration of the film. This isn’t a movie that depends on the kids being morons; everything that he does makes sense and, consequently, he becomes an ideal avatar for the audience and he tries to escape these awful circumstances. Even better, his little sister Gwen (played by Madeleine McGraw) is possibly my favorite character in a movie in years. As sad a and tragic as her situation is, this character is frigging hilarious and incredibly sympathetic. I literally laughed out loud during at least two of her scenes and she got several ovations from the near-capacity crowd in my theater. I’m not familiar with either of these young actors, but they carry this movie and I would want a sequel just to see more of these two playing these characters.
Ethan Hawke is a creepy bastard as The Grabber, managing to be a menacing, almost omnipotent, presence that permeates throughout the film. Despite the film’s general lack of graphic violence, his presence is always felt and the threat that he poses is genuinely frightening. Also worth noting is Jeremy Davies as the abusive, alcoholic father of Finney and Gwen. While such a character is obviously flawed and despicable on many levels, this is one of the few movies I’ve seen that bothers to give an arc to the alcoholic father trope. He’s an asshole, but there is a reason why he is an asshole and, by the end of the movie, even this guy has become a three-dimensional, sympathetic character. That ain’t easy to pull off.
I have one criticism and that’s the inclusion of one obnoxiously goofy character that should have been cut from the film: The Grabber’s half-wit brother that is trying to solve the case of the missing children without ever becoming suspicious of his incredibly suspicious brother. The film generally does a great job of walking a fine line between humor and horror, balancing genuine laughs with a terrifying situation, and this is the one character that throws off that balance and falls into full-blown goofiness. It doesn’t detract from the film too much and he is only in a few scenes, but he could have easily been eliminated entirely and his presence is odd in a film that is otherwise a masterwork of tone.
I’ve been pretty vague on the plot and horror elements because 1. I don’t want to spoil anything and 2. This is a character-driven film and 3. I’ve fallen very far behind on writing these things. However, The Black Phone is a creepy, original and surprisingly fun horror film that shows that the genre isn’t quite dead yet. Go see it, preferably with an audience.
Image By: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Black_Phone#/media/File:The_Black_Phone.jpg
