Grade: A-
Stephen King’s son Joe Hill has dabbled as a horror novelist. The Black Phone – a short story of his from the mid-2000s – is now a Blumhouse feature film, out in theatres now. I think back to my favorite King movie adaptions: Stand By Me, Pet Sematary (1989), Misery, The Shawshank Redemption, and even the IT films from the late twenty-teens. The Black Phone should be in the conversation as one of Hill’s most successful page-to-screen carry-overs, if he continues in his old man’s footsteps.
The scene is set in northern Denver – 1978. The Edgar Winter Group’s “Free Ride” plays on the soundtrack. A little league baseball game ends. The mood turns dark quickly as the opening credits show missing persons posters and grisly images. Our main players are pre-teen to young-teen siblings Finney and Gwen. Throughout the town, children are disappearing – believed to be kidnapped by a man known as The Grabber. He shows up in a black van, with black balloons, and lures the kid into the back of the van, and takes them to his basement.
The movie takes its time letting us get to know these characters before the horror sets in. Finney and Gwen’s father is an abusive belligerent alcoholic widower. Inevitably, The Grabber gets Finney. In the basement lair where he is kept, there is a black phone – an old-timey rotary one, attached to the wall. It’s disconnected, yet Finney receives calls on it periodically. There’s a funny bit where he initially refuses to answer it, thinking he’s imagining or hallucinating it ringing. So it does one long sustained ring until he finally picks up. On the other line are the previous victims of The Grabber, dialing up one-by-one. They either give Finney advice, which has varying degrees of success, or they say the kind of strange, eerie, nonsensical statements that King always does so well in his stories.
I often have questions about killers in movies like this. Do they work anywhere? How do they have the time, money, locations, tools, and general wherewithal to pull this off time and time again? And of course – why? What do they have to gain by doing this? These are largely unanswered in The Black Phone, but here, that feels more like a choice. Sometimes the power is in the mystery, and no need to spoon-feed the audience too much, after all. The film certainly doesn’t suffer by depriving us of these answers.
Performances are effective and convincing. This is a star-making turn for Mason Thames as Finney, who hits all the right marks in a difficult role. As his sister Gwen, Madeleine McGraw is a scene-stealer. She provides the biggest comic relief with her colorful prayers to Jesus. Jeremy Davies as the father loves the bottle and the belt, but there’s more to the character than that. Just keep watching. With a plethora of masks that cover different parts of his face so we don’t see all of it at the same time, Ethan Hawke brings a surprising amount of texture to The Grabber. In a world where so many movie killers yell and rant and rave, Hawke is scariest when he’s the most quiet. It is a performance that reminds us what an underrated and valuable actor he is.
Director Scott Derrickson (Doctor Strange, Sinister) never lets the film degrade into autopilot, or silliness. Nobody does a “stupid person in a horror movie” action. Even the way Finney finds himself walking home alone to be taken by The Grabber in broad daylight is handled well. Every moment and payoff is earned and rings true. All jump scares and gore feel necessary and not cheap or gratuitous. The ending and epilogue are perfect. Not too much or too little happens. The Black Phone is frightening, engrossing, funny, moving, encouraging, and among the best summer horror you’re likely to find.
Grade: A-
Film Reviews by Mark 
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