Mark Reviews Movies: THE BLACK PHONE

The Black Phone, Universal Pictures

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Review by Mark Dujsik | June 23, 2022

A twisted web of shattered nostalgia, inexplicable supernatural elements, and horrific reality is formed in The Black Phone. Co-writer/director Scott Derrickson's film isn't much more than a dark and disturbing game, but the filmmaker plays it so well that there's little reason to care about the film doing much more.

At first, the story simply follows the life of Finney Shaw (Mason Thames), a 13-year-old boy who pitches a wicked curveball in little league and seems like the hero on the mound in a game. Instead, he's beaten by a rival, who slams the ball out of the field but gives Finney the compliment that the kid almost had him. From there, the expectations about Finney's seemingly charmed life collapse in a way that might be funny, if it wasn't so terrible.

He's bullied at school by a trio of boys who have it in for him for the reason that any bully possesses: just because. He and his sister Gwen (Madeleine McGraw) are abused at home by their father (played by Jeremy Davies), a widower and alcoholic who demands complete silence at the kitchen table at breakfast—on account of the hangover from downing beer after beer every night before. The kid has a crush on a girl in his class, and maybe Finney would say something to her, if not for the fact that everything and everyone around him makes him feel so small, helpless, and hopeless.

The film is set in 1978. That's important, not only because it eliminates modern-day technology that would render a good amount of its plot questionable in terms of believability, but also because the story demolishes any kind of rose-tinted nostalgia that opening scene suggests.

Here, the bullies don't stop pummeling Finney just because he's curled up on the ground. His sister doesn't get any better treatment from them when she steps up to help, pounding one bully in the head with a rock that causes blood to stream down his face. Finney's only friend Robin (Miguel Cazarez Mora) may stand up to the bullies who torment the boy and throw racial epithets his way, but the friend knows that the only real way to stop people like these guys is to draw enough blood to make them regret it—and really think about it the next time.

Derrickson and co-screenwriter C. Robert Cargill's tale, by the way, comes from a short story by Joe Hill, who, despite the surname, is a son of Stephen King, and one can sense the influence of the elder statesman of horror here, from that clear-eyed destruction of nostalgia to the story's villain. He's a child-abductor, known only as "the Grabber," and even before we and Finney meet this monster of a man face-to-face (or, better, face-to-mask), his impact affects our protagonist.

The good sportsman of a rival baseball player is taken, and then, so, too, is Robin, which means the bullies have no one to stop them from attacking Finney. Things at home get worse, because Gwen has dreams—more like premonitions—that catch the attention of the cops hunting the Grabber, and dad doesn't like the police attention on his family or him.

The key to all of this seemingly unimportant setup, perhaps, is that it is like a horrible cosmic joke when the Grabber, driving around in a black van and presenting himself as a goofy magician, abducts Finney. Of course, all of the boy's troubles had to get worse, and for the rest of story, Finney is held in the Grabber's basement—with only a mattress, a toilet, some rolled-up rugs, a narrow and barred window, and a door, which is sometimes locked and at others isn't, in sight.

There's also a black phone, naturally, on the wall, but the Grabber insists it doesn't work. That doesn't stop it from ringing or familiar voices to come from the other end of the line.

The Grabber is played by Ethan Hawke, often appearing behind full or half masks and giving the air of child who doesn't want to speak too loudly, lest someone just like Finney's father might hear and be annoyed by his existence. There's a hint that this mercurial criminal might have first-hand experience of something akin to Finney's situation, but that doesn't diminish just how frightening the Grabber's mercurial nature is or how eerie it is to see him, sitting in a chair at the top of the basement steps and with a belt in his hand, sporting a look of determined anticipation for punishing Finney, should the kid break the rules he hasn't established.

As for the rules and tricks of Derrickson and Cargill's script, they're fairly straightforward but also devious and cleverly deceptive. In the basement, Finney has to discover a way to escape, and he only has whatever is in the basement to do so. The eponymous phone comes into play, because those voices know more about the Grabber, the basement, and what might be hidden there than Finney, and if that feels a bit like some supernatural cheating that undermines Finney's resourcefulness, that's partially true. It's also a neat, albeit grisly and bleak, hook for that part of the film's game.

The other elements, mainly Gwen's visions and the cops' investigation, are effective as a way to maintain the story's supernatural leanings and to provide a race-against-the-clock momentum, which is grounded in at least some reality. There's some other trickery afoot in The Black Phone, but one of the things to appreciate is that's it's ultimately a story about Finney's growth. When the time comes and regardless of everything else the plot throws at us, the boy can only count upon himself.

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