‘The Black Phone’ Review: A Promising Premise is Wasted Due to Bloated Performances and Pace
Director Scott Derrickson and actor Ethan Hawke reunite for a horrifying yet meandering tale of abduction that leans too much into the fantastical.
Within horror movies, the themes or characters that terrify us the most are the entities that could happen to us in our real day-to-day lives. A haunted house, an ax murderer, cults, animals, and politicians, all terrifying in their own way. In the case of The Black Phone, the latest from Sinister and Doctor Stanger director Scott Derrickson, the paranoia of walking home in your neighborhood and being taken by a man in a scary mask and thrown in the back of a black van is the foundation he has built to freak us out. And while this is a compelling hook to get us in, it just doesn’t fully work.
Set in Denver, Colorado in 1978, we follow Finney Black (Mason Thames), a middle schooler who is struggling to fit in. He is constantly getting picked on by the other boys in his class, as well as not have enough courage to stand up for what he wants, thus making him somewhat of an outcast. His best friend is his sister Gwen (Madeleine McGraw), who not only protects him from these bullies at school but from their mutual bully at home in the form of their alcoholic father Terrence (Jeremy Davies).
As the school year is going on, boys from Finney’s school have been going missing, with the local police referring to the abductor as “The Grabber” (Ethan Hawke). Finney has seen people on his baseball team, a new friend he has made be taken, yet there is no urgency to get home quickly because Finney does the exact same thing we all do when horrific things are going on around us, don’t think about it and try to move on with your life. But this leads to him walking home one day, and he sees a man who asks if he wants to see a magic trick, and before he can realize that it is The Grabber, he is drugged and wakes up in a dark basement as the latest boy to be taken.
The room has only a mattress and a mysterious black phone, that is disconnected from the wall, with no way of calling someone on it. When The Grabber comes to talk to Finney, he informs him to never pick up the phone, and to not try and escape, otherwise, he will kill him in the most painful way young Finney could think of. As Finney tries to escape, the phone starts ringing, and we come to learn that these phone calls are from the previous boys that were murdered. They tell Finney that only The Grabber can hear the phone ring, so Finney having this ability is a minor miracle. But it really isn’t too surprising, as we Finney and Gwen have supernatural abilities to see things within their dreams, a treat that was passed onto them by their mother, and something that their father wants them to hide away from everyone. As time passes, Finney uses all the advice he can from the calls to try and make an escape plan, while Gwen tries to put together the pieces of her dreams to find where her missing brother is before The Grabber kills him.
Derrickson, who left his Doctor Strange sequel to come back to his horror roots, makes an effective enough horror drama that leaves you compelled from the beginning. This is mostly because he has a masterful way of building up suspense, using ‘jump scares’ sparingly enough so they don’t become old hat by the time the next one comes. But what he makes up for in his direction, he lacks in his storytelling on the page, with a screenplay he wrote with his longtime collaborator C. Robert Cargill. While the more grounded roots of the story are where The Black Phone thrives, there is a massive mistake of centring the major resolution of this story about supernatural elements that come off cheesy and uninspired, thus dragging out the film overall. Sure, this story was a based on a short story of the same name, but there seems to be no real imagination to combining these two genres together, thus making the overall experience a mixed bag.
Then you have to factor in the cast, who do their best with the material they are given. The child performances by Thames and McGraw are good enough for us to by into there relationship as brother and sister, and they excel in moments of pain and confusion as two children coming to term with the growth, they need to find within themselves to become the version of themselves. The only issues are that some of their takes seem to be inconsistent with their overall work, proving that Derrickson needed to work a little harder with these young actors in molding these performances that are vital to the film. Surrounding them is a manic, uneven performance by Davies, who is playing the most generic version of a drunk father figure we have seen in some time. It is clichéd and doesn’t work at all. Unsurprising to anyone, Hawke delivers here, with a terrifying, unpredictable villain that is equal parts creepy and menacing. But while Hawke is good here, there isn’t enough of him, and thus leaving much to be desired in terms of knowing more about this haunting figure who hides himself behind a glorious make-up and mask design.
The Black Phone leaves a lot to be desired and it is good to see Derrickson back in his horror element, trying to craft something that haunt us long after we have left the theatre. But with a muddled script and uneven performances, this is a middle of the road horror film that could’ve been so much more but ends up being fine in the most disappointing fashion.