The Black Phone (15)

A serial killer nicknamed The Grabber prowls the streets of 1978 North Denver, posing as a magician to lure unsuspecting children into the back of his van. He snatches bullied boy Finney Shaw and locks him in a soundproofed basement. A disconnected phone on the wall begins to ring and when a confused Finney picks up the receiver, he hears the voices of The Grabber's previous victims. These phantoms want to help Finney turn the tables on his sadistic captor.

LondonNet Film Review

The Black Phone (15) Film Review from LondonNet

Set in 1978 North Denver, the same year that Michael Myers materialised in the first Halloween, The Black Phone is a stylish and compact supernatural horror that promises more shocks and insidious dread than it ultimately delivers. Scott Derrickson, writer-director of Sinister, reunites with lead actor Ethan Hawke to conjure another mind-bending nightmare, adapted for the screen from Joe Hill’s short story with co-writer C Robert Cargill. As the title intimates, the film’s fantastical plot device is a wall-mounted, rotary dial telephone. The trilling receiver provides an otherworldly connection between vengeful phantoms of kidnapped and murdered boys and a new victim, who is being held hostage in a soundproofed cell…

Hawke plays against type as the creepy antagonist, who does unspeakable things to his hostages and – in the film’s most quietly disturbing scene – sneaks down into his dungeon to watch one exhausted boy snatch a few hours of fitful sleep. The script doesn’t provide a back story for Hawke’s sick and twisted voyeur so he relies on acting mettle and a succession of disfigured, devilish face masks designed by prosthetic makeup artist Tom Savini to sustain menace without clear villainous motivation. Conventional jump scares hit their mark, accompanied by staccato blasts courtesy of composer Mark Korven.

A masked predator nicknamed The Grabber (Hawke) poses as a magician to lure unsuspecting children into the back of his Abracadabra-branded black van. Five youngsters including Bruce Yamada (Tristan Pravong) and Vance Hopper (Brady Hepner) vanish without trace despite the best efforts of Detective Wright (E Roger Mitchell) and partner Detective Miller (Troy Rudeseal) to identify a prime suspect. Their enquiries lead to a girl called Gwen Shaw (Madeleine McGraw), who claims to have prophetic dreams about the missing boys.

Behind closed doors, Gwen’s bullying, alcoholic father (Jeremy Davies) beats her for daring to disclose the psychic abilities inherited from her late mother. Shortly thereafter, The Grabber snatches Gwen’s bullied 13-year-old brother Finney (Mason Thames) and locks him in a dank basement with a soiled mattress. “Nothing bad is going to happen, I give you my word,” growls The Grabber to his deeply sceptical captive.

The Black Phone dials up palpable discomfort but there always seems to be a loose connection to skin-crawling distress. Thames delivers a compelling performance as a whelp faced with the realisation that he will probably die in subterranean gloom while McGraw scene-steals with her spunky urchin’s foul-mouthed outbursts. Derrickson’s use of graphic on-screen violence is sparing. Mindful of victims’ ages, he insinuates torture because the horrors that unfold out of shot in the dark are infinitely more chilling than anything he can drag kicking and screaming into the light.

– Jo Planter