Review: 'The Black Phone' is an effective coming-of-age supernatural horror

SALT LAKE CITY (KUTV) — The Black Phone
3.5 out of 5 Stars
Director: Scott Derrickson
Writers: Joe Hill, Scott Derrickson, C. Robert Cargill
Starring: Mason Thames, Madeline McGraw, Ethan Hawke
Genre: Horror, Drama
Rated: R for violence, bloody images, language and some drug use.

Synopsis: It’s 1978 and children are disappearing in a suburban Colorado town.

Review: Director Scott Derrickson sees “The Black Phone” as a coming-of-age drama with a horror film built within its structure. Drawing from his childhood experiences and a short story by Joe Hill, Scott Derrickson set out to create a horror film that is more than the standard, predictable clichés. He doesn’t avoid the expected tropes entirely, they are here in abundance, but he does emphasize the relationship between Finney (Mason Thames) and Gwen (Madeleine McGraw), a brother and sister with a tormented father, rather than centering the narrative around “The Grabber” (Ethan Hawke, who was at the center of Derrickson's 2012 hit "Sinister"). The children, including the spirits of those who have been killed by our mask-wearing psychopath, drive the story. The adult characters are inept.

The adults are also absent in a way that might be shocking to contemporary viewers. Life was untethered in 1978. Children were given freedom that they wouldn’t be afforded today. Technology was radically limited. You couldn’t track a person’s every move. So, parents didn’t expect to know where their children were at all hours of the day. Yes, we were feral before cell phones.

Not that Finney and Gwen had a model parent looking after them. Their single-parent father is fueled by alcohol and rage. A monster that society was willing to tolerate. There’s a prequel’s worth of trauma there. It doesn’t justify the abuse. It does give it a whiff of context though. The fact that Gwen and her mother would have been accepted into Xavier’s School for Gifted Youngsters means they wouldn’t be openly accepted anywhere else.

Our villain, The Grabber, is a failed magician. A man with a black van filled with black balloons. A man with an extensive mask collection. Hawke gives the character some gravitas, but I’m not terrified by men in masks. I’m terrified of those who don’t feel it is necessary to wear a mask. Nevertheless, horror films love a good mask and “The Black Phone” has plenty of them.

The masks broadcast the mood of The Gabber, but Hawke is still required to do a more theatrical performance where these gestures and movements remind us there is a person beneath the mask. The Grabber isn’t a stiff and lifeless killer like Jason Voorhees.

If the movie was less about the ingenuity of the kids and more about The Grabber, we’d probably get a variety of scenes of Hawke crafting the various masks. There would be an attempt to humanize The Grabber. An effort to give reason to why he does what he does. Sometimes horrible people are just horrible people. There’s nothing to understand because there is no explanation.

So, Finney is kidnapped and put in a dirty basement. There’s a black phone on the wall. We’re told the phone doesn’t work. But when Finney is alone, it sometimes rings. On the other side of the line are the confused spirits of The Grabber’s previous victims. Though they have no sense of who they were, the lost souls try to keep Finney alive long enough for him to be found.

“The Black Phone” isn’t a gory movie. There’s a bit of blood and a wandering corpse or two, but most of the actual violence is spoken of, not shown. That doesn’t lessen the tension. The audience still knows what is at stake.

There are some narrative choices that I would have resisted but “The Black Phone” is generally an effective horror film. It’s not as stylized or as hallucinogenic as “Sinister,” (or “Doctor Strange” if you want to reach into Derrickson’s Marvel past) but to suggest the film lacks style would be incorrect. It oozes with atmosphere.

Like horror and don’t need buckets of blood to hold your attention? If so, I suspect you’ll enjoy “The Black Phone.”