Worth: $16.50
FilmInk rates movies out of $20 — the score indicates the amount we believe a ticket to the movie to be worth
Cast:
Mason Thames, Madeleine McGraw, Ethan Hawke, E. Roger Mitchell, Troy Rudeseal, James Ransone
Intro:
...a focused, tense and utterly engaging horror yarn...
The problem with so-called “elevated horror” (aka the term people who don’t like horror movies use to describe the horror movies they do like) is that after a while it becomes as samey and generic as the lowered variety of the genre. Sure, the slasher movie ran itself into the ground by repeating the same tropes over and over, but the same could be said for the latest indie or A24 film where the monster actually represents depression/racism/capitalism or some other variety of modern evil rendered in mawkish allegory. To be clear, all horror is valid, and genre snobbery is as dull as a Twitter hot take, but variety is always welcome. Which is why, when a solid meat-and-potatoes horror flick like The Black Phone comes along, it feels like a breath of fresh air.
The Black Phone tells the story of young Finney (Mason Thames), a nice kid living in 1978 suburban Denver. Finney’s life is less than ideal. His dad, Terrence (Jeremy Davies), is an abusive alcoholic and while his little sister, Gwen (Madeleine McGraw), is hilariously ballsy, the young fella has trouble standing up for himself. To make matters worse, a prolific child murderer known as The Grabber (Ethan Hawke) is prowling the neighbourhood. One fateful day, Finney finds himself captured and stuck inside the lunatic’s soundproof basement. There is, however, a ray of hope: an apparently disconnected, old fashioned black rotary phone. It begins ringing one night and Finney starts to listen to the voices of the missing and dead…
The Black Phone is the latest film by director Scott Derrickson, who gave us the excellent Sinister in 2012 and the very-not-excellent Deliver Us From Evil in 2014. Since then he’s been stuck doing Doctor Strange but left the sequel, Doctor Strange And The Multiverse Of Madness, due to creative differences. This has proven to be a good move, because The Black Phone is a welcome return to form. Tense, atmospheric and stripped back to the horror basics, it’s a flick that knows what it’s attempting and succeeds on almost every level.
The performances are uniformly good, with very solid work from Mason Thames and a delightfully foul-mouthed turn from Madeleine McGraw. Ethan Hawke is also incredibly creepy, usually seen wearing variations of a scary mask (designed by the great Tom Savini, no less) and oozing slimy malevolence every moment he’s on screen. The screenplay by Derrickson and C. Robert Cargill (based on a short story by Joe Hill) is also very solid, although a couple of moments in the resolution feel a little muddled.
Still, nit-picking the odd fumble aside, The Black Phone is a focused, tense and utterly engaging horror yarn with a likeable cast of characters and a genuinely creepy villain. It’s not trying to do anything more than take you on an edge-of-your-seat journey, with some great jolts along the way, and there’s something genuinely charming and laudable about that.
