Typically, nostalgia is a mix of longing, joy, and melancholy. But when you grew up in the era of Stranger Danger, that longing might have a bloody raw edge, festered with lingering nightmares. The Black Phone calls to all those who remember fearing an unmarked van, the neighbors whispering, a bogeyman appearing at any moment to rip away your freedom, family, and life. A grim tale of a serial killer who targets kids, The Black Phone has some twisted ideas and clever turns. But does it rattle us like those long-ago fears once did? Nope.
In the '70s, there was the horrendous true crime case of John Wayne Gacy, the Killer Clown. In the '80s, Stephen King spun his own version with his supernatural horror novel, It. Now, the kids who grew up in the shadow of such stories are making horror movies of their own. The Black Phone reunites Sinister's trifecta of talent: director Scott Derrickson, screenwriter C. Robert Cargill, and leading man Ethan Hawke. Together, they bring to life a short story by Joe Hill, aka Stephen King's son in blood and brand. While this creative collision might seem a perfect recipe for bone-chilling terror, The Black Phone proves infuriatingly undercooked.
Hawke headlines as "the Grabber," a part-time magician who uses a black van and a balloon diversion to snatch boys off the streets of '70s suburban Colorado. However, the story centers on 13-year-old Finney (Mason Thames), a cowardly kid who seems the least likely to escape. Before him, the Grabber has chosen boys who were either known for being bad, tough, or athletic. Finney is none of these things. Regularly bullied, he cowers from violence and depends on his little sister Gwen (Madeleine McGraw) to save him. She'll throw fists, elbows, and f-bombs without having her pigtails fussed. But in the Grabber's basement, Finney is far from her reach, and so must depend on the dead boys who keep calling him on a disconnected telephone.
Ethan Hawke is dazzling as a vicious masked killer.
If you've been watching Moon Knight, you know Hawke can exude creep vibes even through a smile. Here, he takes his creep show a step further by covering his face for much of the film. When interacting with his captive, The Grabber wears alternating masks, chalk white with heinously twisted features. Each hints at a side of this volatile monster: jolly, punishing, unreadable. Yet beneath these staunch expressions, Hawke's voice runs wild in trills, laughs, and threats. The slipperiness from one mood to the next establishes Finney's desperate situation even better than the solidly squalid basement prison or the ghosts on the phone.
Beyond the voice, Hawke employs a similarly mercurial physicality. One moment, his limbs waver loosely, like a party clown. They're rigid and still the next, brimming with the potential for a vicious blow. A scene in which he is sitting, silent and shirtless on a kitchen chair, is unnerving in part because of the mask, incongruous to the otherwise domestic scene, but mostly because of how his barrel chest sits hard and menacing, like a dragon's belly building fire to spew.
Hill and Cargill's clever story is undone by Derrickson's lack of vision.
By making Finney the least likely boy to survive, the tension is high from the end of act one. The screenplay then makes a grim game out of Finney's flustered attempts to escape, often aided by a cryptic phone call. The audience is invited along to uncover clues, potential tools, and cruel traps. All of this culminates in a David-versus-Goliath finale that is satisfying from a storytelling point of view, paying off all the setups with a wallop. However, a dance isn't just about the steps. It's about moving through them with energy and style. And Derrickson lacks both here.
While conceptually it makes sense to have Finney be a bit of a weenie, it also runs the risk of making him annoying. Thames is tossed onto a dirty mattress and mostly asked to cry and whine in between bouts of whimpered (and clunky) dialogue with the dead. Finney becomes less relatable and more pitiable, which isn't fun to watch. It's grim. And it seems not even the film has the patience for him. The Black Phone oft abandons him to chase down other more compelling characters.
Supporting players Madeleine McGraw and James Ransone steal scenes.
Ransone, who also appeared in Sinister, pops up for a brief thread about a local weirdo who thinks he can unlock the case of this serial child snatcher. Hawke's intensity is matched by the frenetic energy of Ransone, who brings a lightness amid long stretches of deeply dark. The other bright spot in The Black Phone is McGraw as the curse-spitting child medium.
Admittedly, it's a tiring cliche to introduce a little girl and have her key character trait be that she's young, girly, and SWEARS A BUNCH! It certainly grows tedious in The Black Phone, and feels as if Cargill is running out of ideas of what to do with Gwen. Still, McGraw spits profanity with a teeth-grit ferocity that makes the words sting (at first). More importantly, when she has scenes alone, grappling with weird visions and grief over her missing brother, this child actor shows vulnerability and a mature rage. It's a shame her storyline ultimately feels like filler.
Misplaced nostalgia ruins The Black Phone.
With Finney's characterization paper-thin, the film relies less on the audience's attachment to the character than on the memory of this kind of time, this kind of place. For some of us, that will mean actually having been there, in an era when Stranger Danger lore was on the evening news and was the source of school gossip and sleepover horror stories. We're meant to see ourselves in Finney, young and unprepared for a world that is arbitrarily cruel. But Derrickson's gestures at setting are as vague as his character development, leading to a world that seems familiar yet not enveloping.
A desaturated color palette makes The Black Phone feel like we're looking at faded photographs of long-forgotten acquaintances. The jump scares are often predictable, and in one instance pulled directly from one of Sinister's most memorable moments. This, plus plot elements that seem borrowed from Gacy and It, leads to a movie that feels like a remake, even if it isn't.
Bizarrely, the most daring choice Derrickson makes with his worldbuilding is showcasing kids hurling slurs at each other. Sure, such insults used to be pitched around much more freely. But we don't view them the same way today. So when Finney is repeatedly called an anti-gay slur, it's jarring — especially when one of the few things Cargill does establish about him before the abduction is his big crush on a girl. The slur, then, isn't meant to tell us about Finney's identity or interior life; it's just that he is being bullied by mean, slur-saying kids. Happy Pride month.
The Black Phone can be ignored.
In the end, The Black Phone feels like a miss almost across the board. For years, Hill has been forging his own brand of horror with books and interesting adaptations (Horns, NOS4A2, Locke & Key). This is the weakest yet. A story that feels like he was playing in his father's sandbox to create, trying to formulate something grittier and his own, is puffed up with cheap '70s nostalgia for suburban naivete, old-school technology, and a more casual attitude toward kids cursing and hurling slurs. Cargill crafts some interesting turns, but the finale fumbles when its threads should knit together. And then there's Derrickson.
Sinister was a savage character study of a man driven by ambition to self-destruction, peppered with ghoulish spectacle, but grounded by Hawke's compelling — and deeply human — hero. By flipping the script with The Black Phone, Derrickson gives us Hawke as a sensationally unsettling villain, robbing him of his good looks and natural charisma, and us of our comfort within those treasures. Terrific! However, the hero that Derrickson gives us instead is not as morally complex or captivating. The world the director builds is less claustrophobic than that haunted house, because the film keeps bursting out of the basement for chaotic comic relief. What we're left with is a shallowly dug exploration of murder and mayhem...as if Stranger Danger and Stephen King have taught us nothing but mundane homage.
The Black Phone opens in theaters nationwide June 24.
Topics Film
