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The first time a film left me shivering in the dark and white-knuckling bedsheets was when I was 13, watching a slideshow of gore and brutality in Scott Derrickson ’s " Sinister ." Even upon rewatch, after 10 years and the addition of countless horror movies to my watch log, it still makes me quiver.

Upon hearing of "The Black Phone," a triple reunion with Derrickson, co-writer Robert Cargill, and star Ethan Hawke , I was filled with excited dread. Derrickson’s victims are tethered by their consequences. Where "Sinister" had them spun in a web inherent to their demise, "The Black Phone" connects its victims with a thread crucial to survival.

Based on the short story of the same name, written by Joe Hill , the son of Stephen King , "The Black Phone" chronicles a suspenseful tale of The Grabber, a child killer who snatches teen boys in broad daylight never to be seen again. When Finney ( Mason Thames ) becomes the next captive, held in a soundproof basement, he begins to receive phone calls from The Grabber’s previous victims through a disconnected landline.

Stylistically, the film is nostalgic, reminiscent of vintage photographs and the era of striped baby tees, flared jeans, and The Ramones. Warm browns and oranges, film grain, and filtered light flood the screen. But this idyllic '70s suburbia is corrupted by Derrickson’s horror.

The only interruption of the otherwise consistent color scheme is the vibrancy of blood and the neon of police lights, making these moments all the more jarring. The weathered concrete of the basement is painted with brushstrokes of rust and blood: an evidential mural of violence unfettered. The upbeat '70s soundtrack is interrupted by a bassy, resonant score that reverberates in your ribs, sinks into your eardrums, and at times sounds like you’re hearing it from underground in the Grabber’s basement. The film’s opening credits flash through nostalgic B-roll of the halcyon everyday occurrences of suburban youth—popsicles, baseball games, and sunny avenues—only to be interlaced with the vision of bloody knees and stacks of missing persons posters.

This juxtaposition of calm and collection being face forward while violence festers underneath is not only stylistic, but thematic. Timid Finney and his spunky sister Gwen ( Madeleine McGraw ), after dealing with belligerent bullies at school, go home to not be raised by their abusive alcoholic father. “I’ll look after Dad,” becomes a pattern of dialogue throughout the film, when Finney is left to return home while his sister stays with a friend. Son looks after father and siblings raise each other, kids protect each other from bullies while school staff is absent during adolescent brawls, Gwen (with her clairvoyant abilities) leads the police investigation, and past victims communicate with Finney while he’s in the clutches of a killer. It’s this commonality of a child-to-child support system in the absence of reliable adults that makes "The Black Phone" more than a simple story.

Derrickson and Cargill craft a nuanced, multi-layered narrative that takes horror elements and supports them with attentive discussion of cycles of abuse, trauma, and the bond of youth. Hawke’s Grabber is characterized by personality reversal. His faux-jolly disposition flaunts animated mannerisms and a high-pitched voice. It’s eerily childlike, hitching itself to a suggestion of trauma-based age regression behavior, and juxtaposing with the adult-like profanity and maturity with which the kids speak. But the zany harlequin act is fleeting, leaving Finney at the mercy of a total change: a husky, deep tone of voice and unforgiving, violent demeanor.

It’s in these moments where Hawke flexes his performance and versatility. His villainy is unpredictable and volatile. He expertly tiptoes a dissonant line of sprightly youthfulness and depravity. Switching on a dime, and with a mask covering the lower half of his face for most of the film, his acting relies on body language and the emotive flickers of his eyes. Though he was hesitant to play a villain , Hawke more than succeeds, and the emotional dramatic acting that’s laid the foundation for his celebrity translates perfectly to an adversarial role.

Though Hawke haunts the screen, it is the performances of the child actors that pack marrow into the bones of "The Black Phone." The finesse with which Thames and McGraw seamlessly balance a wide range of emotions is a feat. Fear, anger, desperation, and indignation drizzle delicately into moments of youthful glee and adolescent comedy. The punchlines in "The Black Phone" are natural with how the film centralizes young teenagers.

Both Thames and McGraw receive moments of spotlight, and use every minute of individual attention to shred any emotional distance afforded by the screen. Yet some of the most poignant scenes occur in their wordless moments together, where they potently portray an airtight sibling bond in the face of abuse and adversity.

"The Black Phone" is a saga of support and resilience disguised as a semi-paranormal serial murderer flick. Underpinned by emotional performances across the board and a commanding atmosphere, "The Black Phone" aces its foundational qualities and allows its nuances to take control. The gore is secondary to the story, with character development taking first string, but by no means does the film neglect to thrill. Rather, it’s your care for Finney and the intensity of the film’s skillfully crafted suspense that draws your knees to your chest and your nails to your teeth.

Available in theaters tomorrow.

Peyton Robinson

Peyton Robinson is a freelance film writer based in Chicago, IL.

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Film credits.

The Black Phone (2022)

Rated R for violence, bloody images, language and some drug use.

102 minutes

Ethan Hawke as The Grabber

Mason Thames as Finney Shaw

Madeleine McGraw as Gwen Shaw

Jeremy Davies as Mr. Shaw

James Ransone as Max

Michael Banks Repeta as Griffin

Spencer Fitzgerald as Buzz

Scott Derrickson

Writer (based on the short story by)

C. Robert Cargill

Cinematographer

Brett Jutkiewicz
Frédéric Thoraval
Mark Korven

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‘The Black Phone’ Review: The Dead Have Your Number

Ethan Hawke plays the big bad in this 1970s-set child-abduction thriller.

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By Jeannette Catsoulis

More touching than terrifying, Scott Derrickson’s “Black Phone” is less a horror movie than a coming-of-age ghost story. In place of gouting gore and surging fright, this enjoyable adaptation of Joe Hill’s 2005 short story has an almost contemplative tone, one that drains its familiar horror tropes — a masked psychopath, communications from beyond the grave — of much of their chill.

The movie’s low goose bump count, though, is far from ruinous. Set in small-town Colorado in the 1970s, the story centers on 13-year-old Finney (Mason Thames), an ace baseball pitcher burdened by a dead mother, school bullies and an abusive, alcoholic father (Jeremy Davies). An early lecture from a new friend (a charismatic Miguel Cazarez Mora) about fighting back will prove prescient when Finney becomes the latest victim of The Grabber (Ethan Hawke), a clownish magician and the abductor of several neighborhood boys.

While light on scares and short on specifics (The Grabber is a generic, somewhat comic villain with an unexplored psychopathology), “The Black Phone” is more successful as a celebration of youthful resilience. As Finney languishes in a soundproofed cement dungeon, his spunky little sister, Gwen (Madeleine McGraw, a standout), is using the psychic gifts she inherited from her mother to find him. Finney also has help from the killer’s previous victims, who call him on the ancient rotary phone on the wall above his bed, undeterred by the fact that it has long been disconnected.

Revisiting elements of his own childhood and adolescence, Derrickson (who wrote the screenplay with C. Robert Cargill) evokes a time when Ted Bundy was on the news and “The Texas Chain Saw Massacre” was at the drive-in. The movie’s images have a mellow, antique glaze that strengthens the nostalgic mood while softening the dread. (Compare, for instance, Finney’s kidnapping with Georgie’s abduction in the 2017 chiller “It” : both feature balloons and a masked monster, but only one is terrifying.) It doesn’t help that Hawke is stranded in a character whose torture repertoire consists mainly of elaborate hand gestures.

Leaning heavily into the familiar narrative obsessions of Hill’s father, Stephen King — plucky kids, feckless parents, creepy clowns and their accessories — “The Black Phone” feels unavoidably derivative. But the young actors are appealing, the setting is fondly imagined and the anxieties of adolescence are front and center. For most of us, those worries were more than enough to conjure the shivers.

The Black Phone Rated R for bloody apparitions and blasphemous words. Running time: 1 hour 42 minutes. In theaters.

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‘The Black Phone’ Review: Ethan Hawke in a Serial-Killer Movie with Some Nightmare Images but Less Fear Than Meets the Eye

Scott Derrickson's thriller has the trappings of a grungy dread-soaked nightmare, but it's too driven by fantasy to get under your skin.

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Owen Gleiberman

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Ethan Hawke , in 30 years, has never played a flat-out villain before, so it would be nice to say that in “ The Black Phone ” he not only plays a serial killer — one of those anonymous madmen who live in a one-story house of dingy brick with a dungeon in the basement — but that he makes something memorable out of it. His mask is certainly disturbing. Hawke’s character, who is known as the Grabber, is a kidnapper of teenage boys, to whom he presumably does unspeakable things. He drives a black ’70s van with the word Abracadabra written on the side of it, and when he pops out of the vehicle to yank his victims off the street, he’ll be wearing a magician’s hat or carrying some black balloons. But it’s not until we see him in his home element that we take in the full hideous grandeur of that mask, which comes in removable sections and looks almost like it’s been chiseled in stone: sometimes it’s got a leering smile, sometimes a frown, and sometimes he just wears the lower half of it.

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The movie is set in North Denver in 1978, which seems like the perfect setting for a serial-killer movie, especially since it colors in the era with a quota of convincing detail. We meet Finney (Mason Thames), the doleful, long-haired 13-year-old hero, when he’s pitching a Little League game; after he gives up the game-winning home run, we see the teams shuffle past each other, shaking hands and saying “Good game, good game” — a detail owned by “Dazed and Confused,” though at least the reference has its nostalgia in the right place. Finney and his precocious kid sister, Gwen (Madeleine McGraw), discuss who’s the biggest heartthrob on “Happy Days” (she thinks it’s Potsie, but prefers Danny Bonaduce on “The Partridge Family”), and the movie weaves a resonant period vibe out of backyard rocket launchers, “The Texas Chain Saw Massacre,” songs like “Free Ride,” and, tellingly, posters for missing children.

It seems there’s been a recent epidemic of them: five teenagers, all boys, pulled off the streets by the Grabber. And Finney, of course, is next. It’s not long before he’s been kidnapped and stuck in the Grabber’s dungeon — a concrete bunker, soundproof and empty except for a dirty mattress, with corroded walls marked by a rusty horizontal crack that looks like a wound. The heart of the movie is Finney’s experience down there and his attempt to escape. Now and then, the Grabber presents himself to the kid, hinting at terrible things to come, and giving him food, like scrambled eggs that look scarier than anything else in the movie (though they prove quite edible).

Yet despite the hellhole trappings, “The Black Phone,” as we quickly discover, is not a dread-soaked, grungy, realistic serial-killer movie, like “The Silence of the Lambs” or “Dahmer.” It’s more like “Room” driven by a top-heavy dose of fanciful horror, with touches of “It” and “Stranger Things.” We get a hint of where the movie is going early on, when Gwen has a dream revealing details about the killer, like the fact that he keeps those black balloons in his van. You might hear about Gwen’s nightmare premonition and think, “Cool!” Or you might take it as the first clue that “The Black Phone” is a horror film that’s going to be making up a lot of rules as it goes along. The director, Scott Derrickson , made the first “Doctor Strange” film (as well as the 2012 horror film “Sinister,” which also starred Hawke), and here, adapting a short story by Joe Hill, he has made a serial-killer movie that feels like a dark cousin to the comic-book world, with supernatural elements that drive the story, even as they get in the way of it becoming any sort of true nightmare.

The ’70s were an era when Middle American serial killers, the kind who would spread their crimes over decades in places like Wichita, appeared to be sprouting like mushrooms. Yet they were still in the process of becoming iconic; it would take popular culture to accomplish that. (“Red Dragon,” the first Thomas Harris novel to feature Hannibal Lecter, was published in 1981.) Now, however, they’re so iconic that they’re downright standard. In “The Black Phone,” the Grabber violates the bucolic setting but also fits rather snugly into it. The film presents him not as a complex figure of evil but as a pure screen archetype: the psycho with a dungeon next door. Hawke, apart from the Ethan-Hawke-as-demon mask, doesn’t have a lot to work with, and to up the creep factor he reflexively falls into mannerisms that may remind you of Buffalo Bill in “The Silence of the Lambs.” Hawke is such a well-liked actor that he’ll probably get a pass on this, but given the outcry that character caused 30 years ago in the LGBTQ community, you may wonder why Hawke allowed himself to drift into what amounts to a kind of sicko cliché.

In the dungeon, there’s one other object: an ancient black rotary phone hanging on the wall. The Grabber tells Finney that the phone doesn’t work, but it keeps ringing, and each timer Finney answers it the voice he hears on the other end belongs to…well, I won’t reveal it, but suffice to say that the movie has taken a leap beyond the everyday. Finney gets a lot of clues about the Grabber: what his games are, the weak points in the dungeon’s infrastructure (like a hole he starts to dig under loose tile, or a refrigerator hidden in a wall behind the bathroom). Much of this doesn’t lead anywhere, but it establishes that Finney has become part of a brotherhood of victims. He’s a bullied kid who’s going to learn to fight back!

“The Black Phone” carries you along on its own terms — that is, if you accept that it’s less an ingenious freak-out of a thriller than a kind of stylized contraption. It’s a horror ride that holds you, and it should have no trouble carving out an audience, but I didn’t find it particularly scary (the three or four jump-worthy moments are all shock cuts with booms on the soundtrack — the oldest trick in the book). The movie plays a game with the audience, rooting the action in tropes of fantasy and revenge that are supposed to up the stakes, but that in this case mostly lower them.

Reviewed at Tribeca Film Festival, June 18, 2022. MPA rating: R. Running time: 102 MIN.

Production: A Universal Pictures release of a Blumhouse Productions, Crooked Highway production. Producers: Jason Blum, Scott Derrickson, C. Robert Cargill. Executive producers: Joe Hill, Ryan Turek, Christopher H. Warner.
Crew: Director: Scott Derrickson. Screenplay: Scott Derrickson, C. Robert Cargill. Camera: Brett Jutkiewicz. Editor: Frédéric Thoraval. Music: Mark Korvan.
With: Ethan Hawke, Mason Thames, Madeleine McGraw, Jeremy Davies, E. Roger Mitchell, Troy Rudeseal, James Ransone.

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There’s a Better Story The Black Phone Wishes It Could Tell

I haven’t read the Joe Hill short story that The Black Phone is based on, but watching the movie, it’s not hard to imagine what the source material must be like. In some ways, Scott Derrickson’s film still feels like a short story. It’s all setup and resolution, with little of the incident and complication that usually helps a feature-length movie come fully to life. In industry parlance, it feels like it’s missing a second act. But thanks to a host of excellent performances (and a few generic but effective scares), most viewers may not mind.

The film takes place in the year 1974; The Texas Chain Saw Massacre is in theaters, bandannas are in fashion, and the kung-fu craze is in full swing. In the suburbs of north Denver, however, a mysterious figure known as the Grabber is kidnapping teenage boys off the street. These disappearances have understandably invaded the fearful waking thoughts of local teen Finney Shaw (Mason Thames), even though he also has more immediate concerns on his mind — namely, a trio of savage bullies at school and an abusive father (Jeremy Davies, sporting an impressive pompadour and beard combo).

The deeply unstable Mr. Shaw terrorizes both the shy Finn and his headstrong little sister Gwen (Madeleine McGraw), but there is more to this family than meets the eye. Gwen is having dreams that feature specific details about the Grabber’s crimes that have not yet been made public, and the kids’ late mother apparently also had such premonitions and visions. Their alcoholic father is terrified at what might happen if his kids follow in the path of their mom, who we learn killed herself thanks to the voices and visions in her head. When Finn himself gets kidnapped, Gwen swings into action, desperately probing her dreams and breaking out a gauntlet of religious items (like some of Derrickson’s other films, The Black Phone has its share of Christian imagery) for clues to her beloved brother’s whereabouts.

Finn has been imprisoned in a large, dark basement by a masked, reedy-voiced psycho (Ethan Hawke, impressively unsettling in a role that almost never lets us see his whole face). The Grabber insists he will not hurt the child, but we know that he intends to do exactly that. Much of the film involves watching Finn scrape around this basement, and it’s to the 14-year-old Thames’s credit that his character’s predicament never feels repetitive or overtly downbeat. He brings a welcome mix of intelligence, bewilderment, and fear to the part — a complexity rare in young actors.

The Grabber’s basement is empty, save for a black phone that we’re told doesn’t work. Of course, as soon as the captor goes back upstairs, the phone rings. (The movie is, after all, called The Black Phone .) And yes, there is a voice on the other end of the line …

If you don’t want to know anything more about The Black Phone , you should probably stop reading at this point, although some of the following happens early enough that it feels more like part of the setup than an actual plot reveal. Either way, it’s hard to discuss the picture’s key weaknesses and strengths without addressing where it goes. Anyway, spoilers follow.

… The voices on the phone belong to the boys the Grabber has already killed. Finn can presumably hear them because his family is touched by a divine power. The boys are calling from some sort of afterlife, and even though their memories are slowly drifting away, they are able to guide Finn through his predicament — some of it via specific bits of advice, some of it via gnomic, Signs -like clues. Derrickson also uses these phone conversations to stage a number of jump scares which feel somewhat tacked on. These jolts are Finn’s own visions, it seems, but they’re never quite explained within the logic of this world — almost as if the filmmakers came up with them after realizing that mere phone conversations with ghosts wouldn’t provide the requisite genre thrills.

The movie is confused in conception, which is a shame because there’s potential here. The premise is genuinely creepy, and the conceit of phone calls from the afterlife is rife with possibility. When the dead boys first begin to speak, we get a couple of touching flashbacks to their lives, and it feels like the picture might be headed in a more emotional direction. That’s not the only promising idea that’s abandoned. The always-interesting James Ransone shows up as a weird, coked-up amateur sleuth who looks like he’s about to take the movie in a whole other direction — but his presence, sadly, is relatively short-lived and pointless, not quite enough to even count as a red herring. In most other horror movies, this might be a minor narrative nuisance, but The Black Phone at times feels so undernourished dramatically that these dropped subplots feel like missed opportunities.

Even Gwen’s search for Finn, to which the film cuts at opportune moments, is never as filled out as we might like. What makes it work, however, is 13-year-old McGraw’s electrifying performance as the little girl. It would have been easy to play this precocious, strong-willed child as a cutesy, foul-mouthed kid detective, but her concern for her brother shines through. Whenever Gwen is onscreen, the film locks into its more emotional register: We feel her anguish, her growing sense of helplessness.

So much so that the film loses some of its power whenever it cuts away from her. But it has to cut away, because Finn’s dramatic thread is where we get all the jump scares and the creepy imagery and the predictable escape-room theatrics. This tension between the sister’s narrative and the brother’s seems indicative of the rift at the heart of this picture. All throughout, The Black Phone feels like it’s trying to reconcile typical horror elements with the more expressive and tender story Derrickson clearly wants to tell. The reconciliation never really comes, but the cast gets us there anyway.

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User reviews

The Black Phone

After being abducted and locked in a basement, a boy starts receiving calls on a disconnected phone from the killer's previous victims. After being abducted and locked in a basement, a boy starts receiving calls on a disconnected phone from the killer's previous victims. After being abducted and locked in a basement, a boy starts receiving calls on a disconnected phone from the killer's previous victims.

Scott Derrickson
C. Robert Cargill
Mason Thames
Madeleine McGraw
Ethan Hawke
1.5K User reviews
327 Critic reviews
65 Metascore
10 wins & 19 nominations

Top cast 53

The Grabber

Detective Wright

Detective Miller

(as Miguel Cazarez Mora)

(as Brady Ryan)

Mister Hopkins
All cast & crew
Production, box office & more at IMDbPro

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Did you know

Trivia The paperboy is a reference to Johnny Gosch, a paperboy from Iowa who was on a route with his dog Gretchen and disappeared. His dog was found later, but Johnny's disappearance remains unsolved to this day.
Goofs Finney uses what appears to be an LED flashlight during his captivity. These would not have been available in the late 70s and were not common until the 21st century.

Gwen Shaw : Jesus? What the fuck.

Crazy credits A new Blumhouse Pictures logo debuts with this film, featuring a zoom through a house filled with horror-film references.
Connections Featured in Chris Stuckmann Movie Reviews: The Black Phone (2022)
Soundtracks Free Ride Written by Dan Hartman Performed by The Edgar Winter Group Courtesy of Epic Records By arrangement with Sony Music Entertainment

User reviews 1.5K

Tweetienator
Jul 16, 2022
How long is The Black Phone? Powered by Alexa
June 24, 2022 (United States)
United States
Official Amazon
Official Facebook
Wilmington, North Carolina, USA
Universal Pictures
Blumhouse Productions
Crooked Highway
See more company credits at IMDbPro
$18,000,000 (estimated)
$90,123,230
$23,633,220
Jun 26, 2022
$161,440,742

Technical specs

Runtime 1 hour 43 minutes
Dolby Atmos

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The Black Phone Review

Childhood is terrifying..

This is an advance, spoiler-free review of The Black Phone, which will debut in theaters on Feb. 2, 2022.

The Black Phone had big shoes to fill. Nearly a decade ago, the team of C. Robert Cargill and Scott Derrickson debuted Sinister . Their terrifying spectacle would strike fear in our hearts, with one scientific study ruling it the “ scariest movie of all time ." Five years prior (nearly to the day) to Cargill and Derrickson scaring the pants off ofus with Baguul and several nightmare children, Joe Hill was publishing his short story “The Black Phone.” Now, the stars have aligned and The Black Phone is making its way to the big screen with horror maestros Derrickson and Cargill adapting Hill’s chilling story -- and their take thrillingly exceeds the already high expectations they've set up for themselves.

The first third of the film follows Finney (Mason Thames) and Gwen Shaw (Madeleine McGraw) as they navigate pre-teen suburban life in the '70s. Unfortunately for these siblings, bullies and scraped knees aren’t all they have to contend with. In addition to their drunk and sometimes abusive father (played by Jeremy Davies), there’s a kidnapper on the loose in their town, and he’s snatching up little boys left and right. It’s not long before Finney finds himself trapped in the basement of the terrifying mask-wearing Grabber (Ethan Hawke), and Gwen finds herself in a race against time to find her brother before it's too late.

This story is personal to both Cargill and Derrickson, a fact that's highlighted not just by the relatability of the kids’ story, but through the stark set pieces of the ‘70s that play a more pivotal role than some may expect. While some viewers from the younger generation may balk at parents' use of belts and fists, plenty born before 1990 may sink back in their chair and recall some not-so-fond memories from their childhood. Was it monstrous? Sure. Was it commonplace? More than “kids these days” will ever know. The Black Phone feels like a time machine with no interest in stereotypical nostalgia. It doesn’t look like the '70s. It feels like it. There’s a grit there, and it’s not just because of the dirt basement. The authenticity of the backdrop paired with the honest portrayals of youth in that era make it clear that there’s a connection here between the creators and their story. Said authenticity is what makes it so easy to find yourself lost in and subsequently terrified by the world that they’ve created.

Because a good chunk of The Black Phone takes place in the aforementioned dirt basement, the film has to rely on the talents of its cast to keep us intrigued more than some other stories. Thankfully, Mason Thames and Madeleine McGraw were up to the challenge. At the film’s Q&A at Beyond Fest, Derrickson revealed that they held the production for McGraw when scheduling conflicts arose. The studio wanted to recast, but Derrickson refused. It's easy to see why the director was so staunch, and it was absolutely the right move. A lot of attention — and thus, a lot of the praise — will rightfully be for Thames’ stellar performance as his character is forced to stand up for himself in the face of a monster. But McGraw’s contributions to The Black Phone cannot be understated. The fierce little sister trope may have become more common of late, but this kid’s comedic timing is impeccable. She effortlessly switches between snark, despair, and fear.

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Hawke — who doesn’t typically play villains — has to emote solely through his eyes while relying on the painted expressions of whichever mask his character was wearing at the time. Given his filmography, we’ve always known what the actor was capable of bringing to the table, but The Black Phone presented new challenges that Hawke rises to meet on every occasion. The dude is terrifying. Playfulness shifts to sinister intentions on a dime, and it’s all showcased by a guy with a hidden face, a terrifying voice, and haunted, emotive eyes.

The scares here are never cheap. You’ll jump, to be sure, but every ounce of distress is well earned. The supernatural element supports the terror, but it’s the reality of Finney’s situation and Hawke’s unnerving Grabber that keep the tension throughout the story. Though abuse plays a role in The Black Phone, there’s never anything overtly sexual. You never have any question about the Grabber’s sick impulses, but the film expertly illustrates that you don’t have to show something so explicit for it to be real to the audience. It’s the threat of what he will do that keeps the story grounded. A more overt approach would've cheapened the story.

5 Truly Twisted Horror Movies That Are Worth Watching (Once)

The Black Phone is remarkable for a host of reasons — some of which we won’t discuss here because they’re best experienced in the film — but something that stands out is how much it feels like Sinister’s sibling. There are so many similarities between the movies, from creepy kids, home videos, and less-than-perfect parents. Despite those similarities, though, this film manages to be something completely independent. It’s hopeful in ways that Sinister never was (and shouldn’t have been), but there’s also seemingly no solution to the horrors that Finney and Gwen face. You’ll see strong parallels between the Grabber and the kids’ alcoholic father. One hurdle can be leapt if the kids play their cards right. The other, though, lays in wait even if Finney manages to be the first kid to escape his captor. The aforementioned hope is less in Finney and Gwen’s circumstance and more in their connection and power as a team, and it cannot be stressed enough how well these children play siblings. You’re going to care about a kid escaping this situation no matter what because, well, you’re a decent human being. But their relationship and relatability is what keeps you engrossed in their story.

The Black Phone, C. Robert Cargill and Scott Derrickson's clear sister to Sinister, has managed to exceed extremely high expectations in nearly every aspect. The writing/directing team puts personal traumas on full display while expertly showcasing the complications of childhood in the '70s and the very real monsters of our world, while the performances of the child actors Mason Thames and Madeleine McGraw take the already tight story to new heights.

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‘the black phone’: film review | fantastic fest 2021.

Scott Derrickson’s adaptation of a Joe Hill story stars Mason Thames as a boy who receives supernatural help in his attempts to escape a serial killer played by Ethan Hawke.

By John DeFore

John DeFore

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The second feature film (after several TV projects) based on the work of horror author Joe Hill, Scott Derrickson ’s The Black Phone expands on a short story in ways that feel very true to the source material while significantly enhancing its theatrical appeal. It was never in doubt that this would be a more commercial outing than the deeply odd (but effective, in its way) 2013 adaptation Horns , but the picture also dovetails nicely with the current vogue for retro-set genre fare, lightly scratching a nostalgic itch without seeming at all like it’s trying to ride Stranger Things ’ coattails. (Or those of Hill’s father and Stranger inspiration, Stephen King, though this story could easily be one of his.)

The Black Phone

Venue: Fantastic Fest

Release date: Friday, Jan. 28

Cast: Mason Thames, Madeleine McGraw, Ethan Hawke, Jeremy Davies, James Ransone

Director: Scott Derrickson

Screenwriters: Scott Derrickson, C. Robert Cargill

Like the boogeyman in King’s It , the Grabber approaches his prey in the garb of a clown. But this is a vastly more straightforward thriller, whose menace has nothing to do with the supernatural. Ethan Hawke ’s nameless character, whose motives we’ll never dig into, is simply a man who kidnaps teenage boys while posing as a party entertainer, keeps them locked up for a while, and presumably murders them.

Here, the spirit world is in contact only with the good guys, even if its attempts to help often scare them. Like her absent mother before her, Gwen is troubled by prophetic dreams. Her visions predicted the most recent kidnapping, with a specificity that brought her to the attention of local detectives. (Interacting with them and other authority figures, McGraw steals scenes with foul-mouthed impatience.) But she has no advance warning that Finney will be next.

Derrickson and writing partner C. Robert Cargill set us up to wonder if what’s in store between Finney and the Grabber will be a two-handed psychodrama. Once he has kidnapped Finney and locked him in his large, nearly empty basement, the Grabber is nearly gentle to the boy. “I’m not going to hurt you,” he promises, tacitly suggesting that Finney isn’t like the boys who preceded him. But do those promises come from the man Hawke is playing, or from only one facet of him? The lower half of the Grabber’s mask can be switched out to depict different expressions, from no mouth at all to a Joker-like, menacing grin; each may represent a psychological state distinct from the others, as in M. Night Shyamalan’s abduction thriller Split .

But while the interactions between the two, and Finney’s attempts to find a way out, work well enough to sustain purely reality-based suspense, that’s not all we get. An old rotary phone hangs on the basement wall, and it rings an awful lot for one whose cord hangs severed beneath it. Finney starts getting calls from the spirits of the basement’s previous residents, each of whom has his own piece of advice for the kid. Clearly, none of them escaped, so Finn will have to add his own abilities to their know-how — and maybe benefit from Gwen’s as well — if he hopes to get out.

Even when projecting utter desperation, Thames is spirited enough to keep the film from becoming utterly bleak, and the action aboveground offers some lighthearted moments of hope — from Gwen’s increasingly grouchy interaction with a God who won’t deliver visions on demand, to the involvement in the case of Max (James Ransone), a coked-up wild card whose efforts as a civilian detective may be more valuable than the cops think.

A couple of effective jump-scares aside, the film runs on ticking-clock suspense, knowing that whatever the Grabber says, it’s unlikely Finn will stay in his good graces for very long. The story’s final third works even better than the buildup would suggest, shrugging off some of the atmospherics and, with a clever nod to a classic in the serial-killer genre, focusing all the movie’s energies on a sequence that delivers. Happy or sad, this episode will certainly be immortalized in neighborhood lore, the kind of half-factual legend repeated from one school year to the next, until something more exciting happens.

Full credits

Venue: Fantastic Fest Distributor: Universal Pictures Production company: Crooked Highway Cast: Mason Thames, Madeleine McGraw, Ethan Hawke, Jeremy Davies, James Ransone Director: Scott Derrickson Screenwriters: Scott Derrickson, C. Robert Cargill Producers: Jason Blum, C. Robert Cargill, Scott Derrickson Executive producers: Joe Hill, Ryan Turek, Christopher H. Warner Director of photography: Brett Jutkiewicz Production designer: Patti Podesta Costume designer: Amy Andrews Editor: Frédéric Thoraval Casting directors: Sarah Domeier Lindo, Terri Taylor

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‘The Black Phone’ Review: Scott Derrickson Dials Into Realistic Terrors with Arresting Joe Hill Adaptation

Marisa mirabal.

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Editor’s note: This review was originally published at the 2021 Fantastic Fest. Universal Pictures releases the film in theaters on Friday, June 24.

“One minute you’re invisible and the next minute the whole state knows your name.” A young and phantom voice speaks this ominous fact over a rotary phone receiver into the ear of the town’s latest kid who’s gone missing. Isolated in a basement with a single window too high to access and an antiquated phone that won’t stop ringing, Finney Shaw (Mason Thames) accepts his new reality like he does every day in the outside world. He’s used to being the victim of everything kids fear: bullies, the death of a loved one, being unpopular, crossing an abusive caregiver, saying the wrong thing to your crush, even jumping too much while watching a scary movie alone. However, with a little help from beyond the grave, Finney may have just enough fight left in him to face his ultimate fear head-on.

Adapted from Joe Hill’s short story of the same name, “ The Black Phone ” is a sleek, stressful, and violent slice of horror that captures the audience’s emotions as quickly as the film’s antagonist kidnaps children in broad daylight. Ethan Hawke stars as a masked kidnapper (nicknamed “The Grabber”) who terrorizes a suburban Colorado town in the 1970s. Hiding behind the facade of a clumsy magician, he lures kids in with kindness before eclipsing their world with mace and a swarm of signature black balloons.

The story is told through Finney’s perspective as audiences get a glimpse into his home and personal life before he becomes the kidnapper’s latest victim. In between dodging his classmates on the prowl to beat him up, Finney has to walk on eggshells at home in order to avoid any further abuse from his alcoholic father. The only solace he can find is alongside his sister Gwen (Madeleine McGraw), a sweet yet religious spitfire in pigtails, who has no qualms about cussing out cops or smashing a rock over a bully’s head.

However, support comes in supernatural form once Finney winds up in a derelict basement with bare resources sprawled about and a black phone on the wall. His kidnapper, donning a two-piece interchangeable mask (designed by the legendary Tom Savini) taunts him with a ritualistic game that has to occur in order for any torture and Finney’s subsequent death to unfold. Despite being informed that the phone does not work, Finney begins to receive calls from the kidnapper’s previous victims as they provide him useful information for his survival. All the while, Gwen investigates her brother’s disappearance by utilizing her dreams as a catalyst for her clairvoyant abilities.

Hill’s short story is a creepy bare-bones framework, which allows Derrickson and Cargill to deeply flesh out the characters. Finney and Gwen have an admirable relationship where they protect one another from the dangers that stalk them inside and outside of their home. Thames brings a tender sense of vulnerability to Finney but his character arc is exactly what audiences want to see from an underdog protagonist. From the start, McGraw is a force to be reckoned with and was described as “sunshine in the apocalypse” by Cargill during a post-screening Q&A when the film debuted at Fantastic Fest. Her performance as Gwen is a powerhouse of emotion, whether it’s crying for mercy at the hand of her father’s belt or bluntly asking Jesus why he won’t do more to help.

While Hawke typically avoids villainous roles, it’s clear that he enjoyed playing “The Grabber.” Throughout most of the film, his face is hidden, but Hawke uses this to his advantage by playfully adjusting his voice and fluctuating from a menacing captor to a calm presence that teases Finney at a potential release. There are elements similar to John Wayne Gacy present, but the abuse does not cross into sexual territory. What’s also great about this particular villain is that his character does not leave any cravings for a backstory. The “why” of his heinous actions is not a general focus. His behavior is simply summed up as a certain kind of inexplicable evil that is all too common in the news. The fact that Derrickson and Cargill chose to keep his origin story absent works extremely well with the film’s tone and overall dread the story elicits.

The supernatural aspect of dead children talking to Finney over the phone may sound bland, but is executed well through special effects and eerie editing. Their severed voices are coupled with a gory presentation of what “The Grabber” did to them in their final hours, a stark portrait that produces a handful of well-timed and effective jump scares. All the while, production designer Patti Podesta and costume designer Amy Andrews beautifully immerse audiences into the seventies in a naturalistic manner that does not feel forced or overdone for nostalgia purposes. To build upon this time frame, Brett Jutkiewicz adds texture to the film’s story with grainy cinematography and vintage light that captures the dichotomy of a sleepy town being ravaged by a prolific killer.

“The Black Phone” is a succinct and stressful terror blanketed with themes of friendship, family, and inventive portrayals of resiliency. Every aspect of the film is emotionally arresting and tackles timeless fears with razor-sharp precision. Derrickson and Cargill’s collaborative vision navigates horror down multiple avenues and preys upon traditional forms of strengths and weaknesses through aspects of religion and familiarity. For example, terror can live next door in the form of a murderer while simultaneously residing in your heart or simply walking down the hallways at school. The duo who brought audiences “Sinister” now provides a film with a bleak yet entertaining reminder that horror is omnipresent, but sometimes you can find a lifeline in the darkest of hours, if you just listen.

“The Black Phone” premiered at Fantastic Fest. Universal Pictures will release it in theaters in 2022.

The Black Phone review: Ethan Hawke rings in the nightmares in unnerving horror throwback

Doctor Strange director Scott Derrickson follows the landline to 1970s terror.

The call is coming from inside the house. The twist and the gist of The Black Phone is that those calls are actually good news for the boy trapped in a madman's basement — and maybe his best chance to survive director Scott Derrickson 's blunt but brutally effective little slice of supernatural horror, in theaters today.

Phone relies on landlines and several other throwback tropes because it can: The movie opens, not too unlike Dazed and Confused , on a small-town Little League game, Edgar Winters' "Free Ride" choogling on the soundtrack. It's the early 1970s, and kids in stiff-denimed bell bottoms and stripey knitwear know only an analog world of shag-rug living rooms, suburban bike rides, and benign neglect. (Helicopter parenting, clearly, is a concept still several decades away.)

Finney (Mason Thames) and Gwen (Madeleine McGraw) have more latitude than most, largely because their mother is dead and their dad ( Justified 's Jeremy Davies ) is a dedicated low-grade alcoholic. But they also have to reckon with his erratic moods and tantrums; when Finney's chewing makes too much noise or Gwen dares to mention the strange premonitions in her dreams, they might be met by seething outbursts or worse, the belt.

Finney also has to contend with crushes and school bullies, though the biggest bogeyman is someone his classmates just call "The Grabber"; Missing posters flutter on telephone poles and in shop windows for all the boys he's said to have stolen away. When the man in the black van finally comes, it happens in a moment: A strange, giggling figure ( Ethan Hawke , his face daubed in chalky white stage paint like a degenerate mime), grabs Finney and shoves him in before he has a chance to scream.

Once Derrickson ( Doctor Strange , Sinister ) gets Finney in the basement, more paranormal aspects take over (when the old disconnected phone on the wall rings, it's coming from a place no long-distance plan can reach) though Hawke's mere malevolent presence is often the freakiest thing on screen. His nose and mouth concealed by a series of leering, lumpen masks and his motives unclear, the actor swings between breezy benevolence and sputtering rage; there's a game he wants to play, except the rules aren't written anywhere.

Derrickson penned the script with his Doctor Strange cowriter C. Robert Cargill from a short story by Joe Hill , and the slim source material tends to feel padded out accordingly. Basic plot mechanics often don't add up in the details, but high-voltage jump scares abound, and several baroquely composed frames (a goat-horned Hawke stripped to the waist with a whip in his wand, waiting patiently in a kitchen chair; a scattering of black balloons across the sky) are genuine nightmare fodder. Thames, with his fox face and watchful eyes, feels more like a real kid than Hollywood usually allows, and even as goofier gaps begin to appear in the storyline, his MacGyver-like resourcefulness give the movie a witty, furious kick: Home Alone for the Blumhouse crowd. Grade: B

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The Black Phone Reviews

The filmmaking team behind “Sinister” (2012), director and co-screenwriter Scott Derrickson, co-screenwriter Robert Cargill and Hawke, reunite for another hit. Think John Irving’s “A Prayer for Owen Meany” except framed in the horror genre.

Full Review | Jun 9, 2024

Based on Joe Hill’s book of the same name, the creators provide one of the most memorable contemporary horrors, discussing loss, domestic violence, supernatural, and much more.

Full Review | Original Score: A | Apr 10, 2024

It's not groundbreaking, but it's very well done.

Full Review | Jan 18, 2024

Here’s one of those supernatural thrillers that would actually be better off without the supernatural elements.

Full Review | Original Score: 2.5/4 | Oct 14, 2023

Derrickson has succeeded in making a film that is definitely worth any horror fan's time. Is it a new classic? No, but by hell, it is one fun ride.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | Jul 31, 2023

The Black Phone carries a horror premise with a supernatural touch full of potential, but it plays too safe by betting on a narrative that's too simple, predictable, and repetitive.

Full Review | Original Score: C+ | Jul 25, 2023

A New Horror Icon lives

Full Review | Jul 25, 2023

Ethan Hawke attempts to scare in a straightforward serial killer nightmare that is about as satisfying as a one-minute payphone call.

Full Review | Original Score: 2/5 | Jul 21, 2023

Derrickson is comfortable navigating dark and demented worlds, so it's frustrating when "The Black Phone" doesn't come together in a successful way.

Full Review | Original Score: 2/4 | Jul 16, 2023

Derrickson prioritizes jump-scares and sustaining a disquieting mood over the lives of these kids. He loses himself in the technique when the real nightmare is staring him right in the face.

Full Review | May 30, 2023

These additions significantly alter the tone of the original story for better or worse depending on what kind of horror movie you’re looking for.

Full Review | Original Score: B- | Feb 18, 2023

It’s a B-movie abduction flick centered in the 80s that values simplicity over complexity. And ultimately, The Black Phone is a theatrical experience that is sure to get your blood pumping.

Full Review | Original Score: B- | Feb 10, 2023

Scott Derrickson's return to his horror sandbox, The Black Phone, is a fantastic vintage horror film that utilizes sound against its audience.

Full Review | Jan 9, 2023

Ethan Hawke continues his spectacular mid-career run in a rare villainous role.

Full Review | Jan 3, 2023

The Black Phone is easily one of the best horror/trillers this year. The young cast members Mason Thames and Madeleine McGraw light up ever scene they are in & then Ethan Hawke becomes something horrifically unknown and yet interesting. A MUST WATCH FILM!

Full Review | Original Score: 10/10 | Dec 26, 2022

a good ole fashioned scary night out at the movies filled with dead kids, creepy masks, and haunting 8mm film.

Full Review | Original Score: 7/10 | Nov 2, 2022

It is as much ‘coming of age’ as ‘run from the monster’, and that is very much to its credit.

Full Review | Original Score: 8/10 | Oct 17, 2022

The Black Phone is a solid, classical horror flick by a team who love the genre and excel at their craft — what more could you ask for?

Full Review | Sep 29, 2022

In theory, the concept of The Black Phone is unique and interesting.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | Aug 22, 2022

The Black Phone is grounded in realism for a large part of the story & has just a cinch of fictional horror that truly allows the audience to become immersed in the story, which is elevated by good performances & unique creativity within the narrative.

Full Review | Original Score: A- | Aug 21, 2022

‘The Black Phone’ Review: A Thrilling And Terrifying Crowd-Pleaser

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'The Black Phone' poster

The Black Phone (2022)

Blumhouse Productions/rated R/102 minutes

Directed by Scott Derrickson

Produced by Jason Blum, Scott Derrickson and C. Robert Cargill

Written by Scott Derrickson and C. Robert Cargill

Based on Joe Hill’s The Black Phone

Starring Mason Thames, Madeleine McGraw, Jeremy Davies, James Ransone and Ethan Hawke

Cinematography by Brett Jutkiewicz, Edited by Frédéric Thoraval and Music by Mark Korven

Opening theatrically courtesy of Universal on June 24

Penned by Scott Derrickson and C. Robert Cargill, this Derrickson-directed adaptation of Joe Hill’s short story, The Black Phone is a refreshingly unpretentious and relatively unambitious thriller. “Unambitious” isn’t usually intended as a compliment, but the film’s matter-of-fact storytelling and unwillingness to subvert its narrative or character arcs for blindsiding twists and turns are among its strongest attributes. It is immersed in rich period detail and specificity and is in no rush to get to the trailer shots. Moreover, it feels no need to try and outsmart the audience or overly explain its fantastical/supernatural elements. The “what you see is what you get” structure allows the filmmakers to focus on enriching their characters and on telling a simple story as well as possible.

I talk a lot about how one of the elements (at least pre-Covid) for a successful adult-skewing studio programmer is having a simple high concept, and I can do a “plot summary” of The Black Phone in a single sentence. A young boy (Mason Thames) is abducted by a child murderer (Ethan Hawke) only to discover that his prison contains a disconnected phone which receives phone calls from “The Grabber’s” previous victims. Yes, we also get the kid’s younger sister (Madelina McGraw is a scene-stealing, star-making performance) whose apparent psychic powers supply clues to the murderer’s identity, but that’s about it. We get an entire act before the “inciting incident,” which gives the movie time to build its characters and its setting beyond just period piece nostalgia.

Finney is dealing with bullies and nursing crushes, while Gwen’s scary visions unleash fury within their alcoholic and abusive father (Jeremy Davies) as the broader town reckons with a series of child murders that (obviously) has everyone on edge. The block-building is so engrossing as a straight-up drama that it almost risks disappointment when Finney “finally” gets snatched up and driven away to his likely doom. As the post-abduction narrative can’t help but be a little repetitive (since our protagonist is stuck in a single sparse basement interior), it’s to the film’s advantage that we only get around an hour (the film runs a lean 102 minutes) in that core circumstance. That also means we get plenty of old-school character development and storytelling.

The final 70 minutes or so are refreshingly matter-of-fact. That’s not to say the film is predictable, there’s at least one plot point (no spoilers) that I suppose counts as a ghoulish twist, but it treats its plotting, even the fantastical elements, as slice-of-life reality. I did not realize before seeing it that it was based on a short story by Stephen King’s son, but that entirely tracks, and I mean that as a compliment. The film treats the violence and fantasy not as “the reason for the season” but as intrusions upon this character study and in conflict with these otherwise “regular people” and their regular lives. You’re absolutely “rooting against action,” which is almost essential for a successful horror title.

Ethan Hawke spends most of its screentime wearing a creepy mask and makes a point not to dominate the proceedings or overpower the movie. Like M. Night Shyamalan’s Split , we get any sexual threats immediately taken off the table, and in both cases, that’s more about comforting the audience than the kidnapped protagonist. Hawke has little in the way of clever dialogue or quippy one-liners, instead offering a relatively plausible real-world villain. Thames also offers an unusually vulnerable leading turn, leaving McGraw to just plow through the movie with the kind of spitfire turn that will make her an audience favorite. Without feeling out of place, the kid offers copious R-rated profanity with such comically disdainful venom that, yes, I would compare her to Dennis Farina.

The Black Phone works not because it’s filled with jump scares or grotesque images (although it earns its R-rating) but because it’s about peril being visited upon characters we grow to like before the danger strikes. It’s about dealing with trauma without using that in-vogue theme to justify a lack of production value or onscreen entertainment value. Even its finale, no spoilers, puts character and themes over twists and turns, while the whole “kidnapped kid talks to now-dead former victims” gimmick eventually lead to the film’s emotional and (especially for a horror film) crowd-pleasing climax. By not trying to outsmart or confuse its audience, The Black Phone concentrates on what matters and delivers just terrific big-screen entertainment. It’s the best theatrical horror flick since Malignant .

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The Black Phone Review: Coming-of-Age Gets Scary in a Great, Violent Thriller

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Twisters Review: This Immersive Blockbuster Makes Its Mark

Nuked review: a raunchy good time in the apocalypse, house of the dragon star reacts to fans campaigning for him to be in the hunger games.

Sometimes, the most terrifying thing in the world is being a kid. Too young to fully comprehend the complicated machinations of life, and too small to protect oneself from threats both physical and emotional, childhood can be scary. Whether it's monsters under the bed or screaming matches between parents, bullies at school or the crushing social anxiety of young romance, being a vulnerable kid is often painful, difficult, and confusing. This is probably why so many films are about coming-of-age , and so much media in the horror or supernatural genre draws on childhood to tell their stories.

The Black Phone is yet another one, and it's a brutal depiction of childhood. In the film, Finney Shaw essentially suffers everything a kid can — one dead parent and one who's drunk and abusive, very violent bullies, social anxiety with his crush, a sometimes scaredy-cat disposition, loneliness, and a lack of a friend group; he even opens the film costing his softball team the game. This barrage of suffering doesn't compare to what's in store for him though, after being kidnaped by a psychotic masked man known as The Grabber.

The Black Phone and the Violence of Childhood

The Grabber carries Finney in The Black Phone

Finney's life, like The Black Phone , is pretty bleak and getting bleaker, but there are streaks of luminescence in this darkness. His sister Gwen is a shining beacon of hope in his dark world, a wonderfully multifaceted character who's tough enough to cuss out cops and smash kids with rocks if they mess with her brother, but sweet enough to open her dollhouse and arrange her religious iconography every day to pray. She's a wonderful character, protective of Finney and afraid of little in this cruel world except, perhaps, for her father, a wrecked nightmare of a man. A severely alcoholic and diseased person angry over the death of his wife, whom he sees in Gwen and can't stand, Mr. Shaw uses violence to pathetically prop up what's left of his rotten ego.

This is the crux of The Black Phone — violence as a human ritual for protection. In this small Denver suburb in 1978, the school bullies perennially beat up others to protect their status and pride, the drunken father engages in belt-whipping in a routine to protect his position of authority and fragile ego, Gwen uses violence to protect Finney, and so does Finney's only friend in the world, Robin. (A key scene finds Robin beating the bloody viscera out of a bully, with Finney walking away in disgust). The Grabber uses an explicitly ritualized system of violence to protect his very sense of self and crumbling psyche. Interestingly, until the movie's final scenes , The Grabber is practically the only character to not draw blood.

The Black Phone is Not a True Story But is True to Childhood

Ethan Hawke as The Grabber sits in a chair with a belt

That's because the world that writer/director Scott Derrickson and his frequent co-writer C. Robert Cargill (who both also worked with Ethan Hawke in Sinister ) has painted in The Black Phone is a misanthropic and cruel one, perhaps needlessly so. However, there's an argument to be made that the violence in this small town is exaggerated to represent how Finney feels as a child.

Related: Scott Derrickson Says Walking Away From Doctor Strange 2 Was 'Most Difficult Decision' of His Career

This might explain some leaps of logic in The Black Phone , small things which require a tight suspension of disbelief that allegories often use, like the fact that five children have gone missing in a very small town and yet there's no curfew or heavy police presence on the streets for when a glaringly obvious, huge black van pulls up in broad daylight to abduct kids. Or how kids' skulls are smashed with rocks or their faces bashed into a pulp without seemingly any ramifications or consequences. All of this means that, while not the most realistic film, The Black Phone uses its exaggerations to be true to the nature of a traumatic childhood.

The Allegorical Horror of The Black Phone

The Tom Savini designed mask worn by Ethan Hawke as The Grabber in the Black Phone

If it's taken a while for this review to get to the horror of The Black Phone , that's because the film does the same. Though it has a very engaging first half, the actual scares and horror elements of the film take a while to develop (though when they do, there are a few solid jump scares and some wonderfully creepy moments).

Those seeking a straight-up horror film might be a bit disappointed by the patience the film sometimes demands, because The Black Phone is horror the way The Sixth Sense was horror — using genre elements to tell a dramatic and often suspenseful story about childhood. The film feels more like Room remade by Stephen King (whose son, Joe Hill, actually wrote the short story it's based on).

Mason Thames and Madeleine McGraw as Finney and Gwen in The Black Phone

The allegorical nature of The Black Phone is made clear by its titular supernatural device. Antiquated and disconnected on the concrete walls of the bare basement in which Finney is held, the phone nonetheless rings. Through its dark receiver, Finney is able to communicate with the five dead boys that The Grabber has kidnaped; each one provides tips from their experience in the basement, helping Finney with clues, riddles, and objects they discovered during their stay.

Meanwhile, Gwen's dreams give her hints about The Grabber, as the girl is imbued with the same 'touched' powers of her deceased mother (which is part of Mr. Shaw's resentment of her). Though each dead victim and psychic dream leads to a frustrating impasse, they build up the suspense and come together ingeniously in the final sequences.

Scott Derrickson Uses Horror For Coming-of-Age

Mason Thames as Finney in The Black Phone

The finale of The Black Phone makes it clear that a lot of the film is a coming-of-age allegory about standing up for yourself and dealing with the world's onslaught of threats; it's about Finney coming to terms with his childhood. This is made clear by some similarities between the two different violent male adults in the film, The Grabber and Mr. Shaw, and the way they each hold a belt for punishment. The basement is symbolic of Finney's childhood itself and is the basement every tortured, self-conscious, lonely kid has to metaphorically escape to grow up.

Related: The Best Coming-Of-Age Films of the '80s

The Black Phone is Scott Derrickson's escape from his own proverbial basement. The Doctor Strange director's childhood town impacted him heavily, as he tells Wenlei Ma for an Australian news site . "I was inclined to tell a story like this, because I felt that I had a lot of work at reckoning with aspects of my past and the impact it had on my life and who I was becoming as a person." Derrickson continues:

I grew up in an area of north Denver that was pretty violent, a lot of bullying, a lot of fighting, a lot of kids were bleeding all the time. It was also right after Ted Bundy had come through Colorado, killing people. And the Manson murders had just happened. When I was eight years old, my friend next door came knocking at my front door and said, ‘Somebody murdered my mum.’ The mother of my friend next door was murdered. And there was a lot of domestic violence, even in my own home and in the homes of a lot of these kids that I knew. Parents punished children much more aggressively, and so it was a very violent, scary kind of place to grow up in a lot of ways. And I tried to bring that environment realistically into the movie.

“The Black Phone is essentially about childhood trauma, and it really is about what that is like and what it feels like," Derrickson says, and the world he and Cargill creates in The Black Phone helps process this expertly.

Ethan Hawke, Mason Thames, and Madeleine McGraw Are Amazing in The Black Phone

Ethan Hawke in the horned mask as The Grabber in The Black Phone

Of course, this kind of catharsis would only be personal and not an excellent film without the talent of so many people involved. The young Mason Thames leads the proceedings as Finney and does an incredible job, even when he has practically nothing to work with, alone in a sparse basement. His resolution and arc from cowardice to courage is perfectly expressed despite his surprisingly stoic face. Madeleine McGraw might just be the best part of The Black Phone as Gwen, a delightful combination of precociousness and innocence, suffering and strength. Whether she's incongruously cussing out Jesus in her otherwise sweet prayers or fighting with her father, the young actor explodes in every scene she's in.

Related: How Ethan Hawke Has Mastered the Art of Being a Villain

Then, of course, there's Ethan Hawke as The Grabber. Much has been made of his performance and his recent turn to villainy in roles like this, Moon Knight , and Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets , and for good reason. While Hawke is obviously a master of his craft (and a great writer), it's been fascinating to see him take on such menace recently. The actor was worried about playing villains, telling Entertainment Weekly , "I've always had this theory that when you teach an audience how to see the demon inside you, they don't un-see it for the rest of your career." While hopefully this isn't true, it wouldn't exactly be a negative thing to have more Hawke villains.

Ethan Hawke as The Grabber in The Black Phone

That's because he's amazing here. Hawke hides his face in a variety of ways behind a combination of masks with detachable parts designed by the great Tom Savini (who did make-up and effects for films such as Dawn of the Dead, Creepshow, Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2, and Friday the 13th ). Nonetheless, Hawke's great performance is incredibly expressive both physically and vocally, exuding psychotic menace with a kind of sick grace, but also childlike and unstable on occasion. With a long career as a true artist, it'd be presumptuous and perhaps unfair to say he's at the top of his game here, but he's close.

Hawke is the perfect manifestation of the horror Derickson wanted to exorcize. “Catharsis can come from using horror to confront the spoken or unspeakable evils in our lives, in ourselves, in our families, in strangers and nature, in the world. That’s what the genre is for; it’s all about in some ways confronting and facing what is frightening and traumatic in the world.” While there should be 'think pieces' on the arguably problematic conclusions The Black Phone comes to regarding violence and self-defense, the film itself is a great accomplishment. Wonderfully directed, expertly acted, and intelligently scripted, The Black Phone rings true.

From Universal Pictures, The Black Phone will be released theatrically on June 24th and can be streamed on Peacock 45 days after its release (August 8th).

Movie and TV Reviews
The Black Phone (2022)

The Black Phone Review

24 Jun 2022

The Black Phone

Where do you go when you’re lost? If you can, you find a way home. In many ways, this is the path that filmmaker Scott Derrickson has chosen. After exiting Marvel ’s Doctor Strange In The Multiverse Of Madness (possibly via a glowing orange portal) during pre-production, having successfully launched the character on screen in 2016’s Doctor Strange , the director now finds himself back in, well, Sinister territory with this, his horror comeback. There’s ultra-dark subject matter. Ethan Hawke in a major role. Regular co-writer C. Robert Cargill back on scripting duties. Jason Blum as producer. Scott Derrickson is home again.

Following his foray into multi-million-dollar blockbuster territory, The Black Phone is not so much a step back for the director as it is a film about looking back — at what home really is; at Derrickson’s own upbringing; at the forces (and friendships) that forge us into who we are. The ideal prism through which to explore these ideas is Joe Hill’s short story, taken from his 2005 20th Century Ghosts collection, resulting in an adaptation whose bleak premise and personal demons coalesce into a surprisingly warm, hopeful, and — yes — scary film.

Derrickson has spoken much about his own childhood in relation to The Black Phone , having grown up in a scuzzy ’70s Denver neighbourhood suffused with violence. It was a time not just of physical parental discipline and bloody, kid-on-kid backyard beat-ups, but one in which the spectre of Ted Bundy (who committed several murders in Colorado at that time) loomed large. All of these forces swirl around The Black Phone ’s central figure of Finney, excellently played by Mason Thames in his big-screen debut. He’s an almost-teen growing up in scuzzy ’70s Denver, where his alcoholic father regularly brandishes his belt as a whipping tool, bullies wait round quiet corners to ambush him, and the local urban legend of child-catcher ‘The Grabber’ adds an ever-present threat of abduction. Even before he’s held captive in The Grabber’s basement, Finney lives in the shadow of danger.

Derrickson’s film spends a reasonable amount of time in the outside world before trapping its central character in stark, concrete walls — evoking the time and place with a Linklaterian ability to turn memories into movie scenes. ’70s rock pounds on the soundtrack (The Edgar Winter Group’s ‘Free Ride’ can’t help but evoke Dazed And Confused ), bottle rockets soar, and kids brag in bathroom stalls about seeing The Texas Chain Saw Massacre . It all feels fondly remembered — but that warmth sits side-by-side with the ever-present threat of physical and emotional torment, and tales of boys vanishing with black balloons left at the scene. Derrickson evokes both the nostalgia and the nastiness with skill, neither one negating the other.

Hawke becomes one with The Grabber's masks, perfectly moulded to his facial contours. It’s hard to look away.

Once The Grabber bundles Finney into his black van, the film dials in on its central conceit: that the killer’s former victims can speak to the boy from beyond the grave through a disconnected landline attached to the basement wall. It’s here that The Black Phone plays like the darkest possible iteration of an Amblin movie (yes, darker than IT ), as child ghosts call up to help Finney escape a similar fate. Hawke, in a rare villain role (albeit his second this year, post- Moon Knight ), gives a frightening and fascinating physical performance — since his face is masked for almost the entire movie, it’s his presence (sometimes dominant, sometimes playful, always creepy) and vocal work that most impresses. He swaps out the upper and lower portions of his devil-horned mask like some fucked-up psychological exercise — donning frowns that feel more like snarls, or malice-dripping Man Who Laughs grins. Sometimes, he exposes his eyes or mouth entirely. Hawke becomes one with those masks, perfectly moulded to his facial contours. It’s hard to look away.

The Black Phone ’s effective jolts and jump-scares should quell summer crowds looking for a straight-up scarefest, but it’s the dread that’s most palpable — the spectre of waiting for repercussive violence, whether in Finney’s attempts to escape The Grabber’s basement, or when anticipating his father’s wrath. And the salvation from all this is companionship; from the lingering ghosts of fellow kids, or Finney’s psychic sister Gwen ( Madeleine McGraw , also excellent), who dreams in Super 8 and delivers perhaps the greatest cinematic prayer of 2022: “Jesus: What the fuck?!”

While there are occasional tonal missteps — James Ransone ’s brief supporting character Max, conducting his own Grabber investigation, feels out of place — The Black Phone manages to be a mainstream genre movie that also feels deeply personal and impassioned. It’s horror, delivered with considerable heart. Welcome home, Scott.

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DVD & Streaming

The Black Phone

Content caution.

In Theaters

June 24, 2022
Mason Thames as Finney; Madeleine McGraw as Gwen; Ethan Hawke as The Grabber; Jeremy Davies as Terrence; E. Roger Mitchell as Detective Wright; Troy Rudeseal as Detective Miller; James Ransone as Max; Miguel Cazarez Mora as Robin; Rebecca Clarke as Donna

Home Release Date

July 15, 2022
Scott Derrickson

Distributor

Universal Pictures

Movie Review

The phone hangs on the wall, black and dead. Dead as the children who slept there, ate there, were beaten there.

Were murdered there.

Finney’s not the first boy to find himself in this cracked, barren Denver basement in 1978. The man— The Grabber , people call him—prepared the place well. The bed is fastened to the floor. The toilet stands in a corner. The metal door latches tightly. The basement is soundproofed by The Grabber’s own hands. If Finney screams, he’s assured, no one will hear.

Finney knows he’s right. But when The Grabber leaves the room, he screams all the same—desperate, panicked wails that he hopes may work through a crack in the wall, a seam in the basement window (six feet up, and barred).

But no one heard the others’ screams. Not those from Bruce, the budding baseball star Finney nearly struck out that summer. Not Robin, Finney’s tough, worldly wise friend. They all screamed, Finney knows. They all disappeared just the same.

The phone—with a rotary dial and a cut cord—is a relic from an earlier time. A happier one, perhaps. Finney doesn’t know why The Grabber left it there. Perhaps he’s never gotten around to taking it down. Perhaps he likes the way it looks. Perhaps, somewhere in his twisted brain, he enjoys the irony: a beacon of hope in that hopeless place; a symbol of connection where lives are disconnected.

Finney knows that, unless something remarkable happens—something miraculous—he’ll die here, like the others.

The dead phone hangs on the wall, almost mocking any thought of escape, any miracle.

And then it rings.

Positive Elements

Finney’s life wasn’t so hot even before The Grabber got him. The 13-year-old was bullied and sometimes beaten at school. His father was abusive, too—drowning long-held grief in alcohol and rage.

But amid those trials, Finney formed an enviable relationship with his younger sister, Gwen. The two support each other. And when Gwen stays the night at a friend’s house, Finney promises to “look after Dad.” And so Finn does—gently removing glasses from his father’s sleeping hand and picking up the trash.

Finney’s protected from those school bullies to some extent by Robin, his small-but-resourceful friend. When a handful of bigger boys prepare to beat up Finney in a bathroom, Robin fortuitously walks in—telling the bullies that if they mess with Finn, he’ll mess with them (albeit using far more colorful language). And even though they’re all a foot taller than Robin, too, they back off.

And when Robin’s not available to protect Finney, Gwen is: When the bullies waylay Finney, Gwen sees what’s happening and flies into the fight—doing her best to protect her big bro.

Once Finney is nabbed by The Grabber, he receives some unexpected encouragement. He’s told that in spite of his passivity in the face of all that bullying, he’s stronger than he gives himself credit for.

Spiritual Elements

In most supernaturally tinged horror stories, evil is the supernatural force, while help is more tactile and tangible: Ghosts are dispelled by the dawn, vampires are killed by wooden stakes.

The Black Phone flips that script. Here, evil is as solid and obvious as the flesh-and-blood stranger down the street. But help, it seems, comes from beyond.

Some of that help comes directly through the black phone itself. Through that phone, Finney is able to talk with the Grabber’s previous victims—all of whom have something important to tell him. The afterlife they’re in doesn’t sound particularly nice: We don’t know much about it, but one boy tells Finney that they don’t play baseball there, while another says that knowledge of their names is the first thing they lose. It feels as though their souls may be slowly fading—perhaps holding on to get a measure of revenge on their killer.

But another, more Christian, element mingles with that black phone.

Gwen, we learn, has dreams that she says sometimes come true. (Her mother was also apparently “touched” in the same way.) But she also prays to Jesus, hiding a trove of religious paraphernalia (a cross, a Gideon’s New Testament Bible, a picture of Mary, among other things) in her dollhouse. Her father doesn’t approve of her dreams, and he’d likely not approve of all that praying, either. But when Finney’s kidnapped, Gwen prays fervently and passionately—asking Jesus for dreams that might help her find and rescue her brother.

Her relationship with the Almighty isn’t postcard perfect. She bargains (saying she’ll follow Jesus for the rest of her life if He just helps her) and lashes out with an angry, obscene rant when her dreams seem to add up to nothing. She wonders aloud whether Jesus is even real.

But the movie suggests (without baldly stating) that He is. And even though Gwen acknowledges that Jesus doesn’t often interfere with what’s happening down on Earth, she asks for an exception—and it seems like He gives her one.

We see crosses elsewhere, too. The Grabber almost always wears a mask, and most have horns on them—making him look like a devil. Finney worries about an urban legend that you shouldn’t say The Grabber’s name out loud.

Sexual Content

We never see The Grabber molest anyone, but we can infer that The Grabber’s motives are at least partly sexual. All his victims are boys, and most are young teens. When Finney wakes up in his basement prison, he sees The Grabber staring at him. Finney asks what he’s doing, and his abductor says, “I just wanted to look at you.”

He sets traps for his victims, we’re told—waiting for them to do something “bad” as he waits and watches, without a shirt and a belt in his hand. When they do this “bad” thing (such as trying to escape), they become “naughty boys,” and The Grabber’s “game” moves into another stage.

Finney’s bullies insinuate that he’s gay—calling him a “fairy,” along with other crude names. That appears not to be the case: Finney seems to have a crush on a particular girl. And when that girl volunteers to be his partner in science lab, Gwen teases him about his new “girlfriend” all the way home.

Violent Content

Believe it or not, The Black Phone’ s most violent moments may happen outside those basement walls—and The Grabber is clearly not the only one enamored with violence.

Take Robin, Finney’s bully-beating pal. We see a much bigger kid challenge him to a fight, which Robin viciously accepts. Not only does he win, but he straddles the guy and punches him repeatedly in the face until it’s covered with blood. He later tells Finney that he didn’t want to go that far. But he also knew the fight had an audience, and Robin wanted to send a stronger message: “The more blood, the better—for the crowd.”

A trio of bullies does eventually catch up to Finney. They throw him to the ground and kick him repeatedly. When sister Gwen tries to rescue him, she roundhouses one of Finney’s attackers, knocking him out of the action. But someone eventually punches Gwen right in the mouth, too: She and the guy she coldcocked sit side by side after that, incapacitated and bleeding from their injuries while the bullies keep up their assault on Finney.

Another teen fights with a handful of others in a convenience store. Everyone suffers their share of injuries, and one teen carves a set of numbers into another’s forearm with a knife.

As mentioned, Finney and Gwen’s father, Terrence, is abusive. We see him beat Gwen savagely on the rump with a belt (the actual blows are outside the camera’s range)—his way of “encouraging” her not to believe that her dreams are anything more than dreams. [ Spoiler Warning ] We learn that Gwen’s mother also had dreams that seemed to foretell reality and the future, and it eventually drove her to suicide.

We see visions or ghosts of The Grabber’s other victims covered in their injuries. One seems suspended in the air, his frontside facing the ceiling and his back bending more than perhaps it should. Someone is killed via an axe to the head; another victim is strangled to death. Someone’s leg snaps. People are beaten, sometimes with weapons. One of The Grabber’s victims tells him that it’s part of the “game” for The Grabber to beat his victims with a belt until they pass out.

Finney uses a toy rocket ship to carve a huge gash in The Grabber’s arm. We see graves where The Grabber has buried his victims. He threatens to gut Finney “like a pig” if he makes a noise, and then strangle the boy with his own intestines. A class prepares to dissect frogs. Bloody injuries are featured prominently in the opening credits.

Robin praises the movie The Texas Chainsaw Massacre to Finney, who says his dad would never let him watch an R-rated movie. He does watch an old-time horror flick on TV, though, once his father passes out for the night: The movie, though mostly in black and white, does feature a great deal of bright red blood—including a bathtub full of the stuff from which a hand slowly emerges.

Crude or Profane Language

Nearly 30 f-words litter the dialogue here. Many of them are uttered by Finney’s little sister, Gwen, and directed at bullies, police officers and Jesus Himself. We hear about a dozen instances of the s-word, along with sporadic uses of “b–ch,” “d–n,” “h—” and “f-g.” God’s name is paired with “d–n” at least three times, and Jesus’ name is abused once.

Drug and Alcohol Content

Finney and Gwen’s father drinks constantly. We first meet Terrence as he’s recovering from a hangover. He almost always has some sort of drink in his hand, and he rarely seems completely sober. In an effort to get Terrence to stop beating her, Gwen dangles a mostly empty bottle of vodka over the kitchen floor, telling him she’ll drop it if he whips her again. He calls her bluff, she drops it, and the resulting beating takes on added ferocity.

The police question a character named Max, a guy who has been following the cases of the missing boys closely and has a number of theories about where the killer lives. The detectives are unimpressed—perhaps, in part, because of mostly sniffed cocaine lines on the coffee table. They tell Max he should probably clean up: Max curses the oversight, then sniffs another line of cocaine.

The Grabber sprays something in the eyes of his victims, which temporarily blind them. Finney worries that the scrambled eggs that The Grabber gives him are drugged. The Grabber wonders why he’d need to drug the eggs when the boy’s already down in the basement.

Other Negative Elements

Finney drinks toilet water in the Grabber’s basement. Gwen can be rather disrespectful to authority figures.

The Black Phone is a horror flick with heart. But that doesn’t make it any less horrific.

It’s based on a short story by Joe Hill, who just happens to be son of famed horror author Stephen King. And while Hill has won numerous writing awards himself, this story seems to pluck liberally from his father’s catalog: kids in danger; supernatural twists; seemingly random events that come together to form a neat, surprisingly intricate, conclusion.

In the hands of Scott Derrickson, a director who’s spoken before of his Christian faith, that story becomes a springboard to explore aspects of that faith. Gwen struggles to believe when her dreams seem to lead to nowhere. Finney nearly gives up on the phone, when all the advice he receives from beyond the grave doesn’t seem to work.

The phone itself becomes a symbol of belief, in fact. The Grabber heard it ring once, but he passed it off as static electricity. Finney’s later told that the Grabber doesn’t hear it because he doesn’t want to hear it. For those who are familiar with C.S. Lewis’ The Chronicles of Narnia , it reminds me a little of Uncle Andrew in The Magician’s Nephew . In the book, the lion Aslan is a Christ figure who comes to sing the Narnia into being. But Andrew refuses to see Aslan as anything more than a lion, and eventually he hears not his song, but just a series of horrible roars.

But while all that may elevate The Black Phone a cut above your normal horror flick, the cut still sinks pretty deep.

The story focuses on a serial killer who preys on boys—many of whom don’t make it and (the movie suggests) suffered badly. Blood and gore are relatively restrained for an R-rated film, but there’s still enough of it to warrant that restrictive rating. And even if there wasn’t a drop of blood, the profanity itself would push it well outside the remotest family-friendly territory.

Not exactly a ringing endorsement for The Black Phone , is it?

Paul Asay has been part of the Plugged In staff since 2007, watching and reviewing roughly 15 quintillion movies and television shows. He’s written for a number of other publications, too, including Time, The Washington Post and Christianity Today. The author of several books, Paul loves to find spirituality in unexpected places, including popular entertainment, and he loves all things superhero. His vices include James Bond films, Mountain Dew and terrible B-grade movies. He’s married, has two children and a neurotic dog, runs marathons on occasion and hopes to someday own his own tuxedo. Feel free to follow him on Twitter @AsayPaul.

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The Black Phone Review: Scott Derrickson Delivers The Best Joe Hill Adaptation Yet [Fantastic Fest]

Ethan Hawk as The Grabber in The Black Phone

If you know me or my work, you know I'm a Stephen King guy. My (far too) early childhood viewings of adaptations of his work like "The Shining" and "Stand By Me" tempted young me to pick up my very first King book in the sixth grade. It was "Cujo" and I'd read it in snippets while my teacher wasn't looking, hiding it in my perfectly-sized pencil box when their Sauron-like gaze fell my way.

About halfway through the book, most of which I didn't fully understand but could keep up with thanks in no small part to having seen the movie version, I made a pledge to myself that I'd read everything he's ever written; a pledge, I might add, that I kept.

One of the fringe benefits of being obsessed with King was that I came to Joe Hill's work earlier than most. I'd wager that Hill really started his ascension with his comic book work (if you haven't read any of his "Locke & Key" comic series, I highly recommend it), but for me it started with the double whammy of his short story collection "20th Century Ghosts" and his novel "Heart-Shaped Box." He came right out of the gate swinging, stepping out of the shadow of his father and blazing his own trail. I tore right through "Heart-Shaped Box" and would recommend it to any horror fan, but I think what really hooked me were his short stories.

Yes, he plays with horror, and delights in some extremely cruel things, but the emotion Hill imbues his stories with, especially his short stories, is the real sweet spot. The titular story in "20th Century Ghosts" is about spirits that frequent an old movie theater and marries my love of genre fiction and my cinephile tendencies. If ghosts are real and the day comes when it's time for me to check out, you'll probably find my spirit chilling at a movie theater, watching movies and knocking phones out of rude texters hands like I'm Vincent Schiavelli in "Ghost."

Hill's work hasn't been adapted as frequently as his dad's, but his track record is pretty good. "Horns" is fun, the "Locke & Key" Netflix series is well-done and definitely faithful, "In the Tall Grass" is an effective thriller, and "NOS4A2" has a pretty dedicated fanbase. But I think "The Black Phone" might be the best adaptation of Hill's work so far.

Heart Plus Horror

"The Black Phone" had its world premiere at Fantastic Fest last night with director Scott Derrickson and co-writer C. Robert Cargill (who previously collaborated on "Sinister" and "Doctor Strange") in attendance. I went in optimistic, because Derrickson's a hell of a shooter, but if I'm being honest, I was a little curious how the adaptation would stretch the central conceit of the not-even-20 page story into a feature.

I'll avoid any major spoilers as I dive into this review, but if all you want to know is if it's good or not, then I'll say it's really damn good right up front. If you're sold and haven't read the short story, then why not go in cold? The film has a release date of January 2022, so you have a little time to sit and wait, but it's worth it. Trust me.

The movie's about a young boy named Finney (Mason Thames). He's a kind-hearted kid and that makes him a target for the school's bullies. He's a good kid, but isn't a fighter. In fact, his much younger foul-mouthed sparkplug of a little sister (Madeleine McGraw) is the fighter of the family.

Children have gone missing in his town for quite a while. The locals call the mysterious perpetrator "The Grabber" (Ethan Hawke) and, as I'm sure you've guessed by now, Finney becomes the latest victim of this child abductor. It's up to Finney to find a way to get over his fear and get out of his basement prison, but he does have help.

Undead help, but hey, you take what you can get in these kinds of situations.

There's a black phone in the room with him and although it's disconnected, young Finney hears it ring. The voice on the other end of the line is one of The Grabber's previous victims. A dead kid, in other words, but one that tries to help Finney survive.

This film lives or dies on two very key performances. The first is the villain, a mask-wearing psycho played with great relish and dedication by Hawke, and the second is Finney himself. Finney is the most important character in this thing because if the actor comes across as precocious or "acty," the whole movie falls apart. You won't buy it and if you're not invested then the scares don't work.

It's a lot to ask of any actor, let alone a tween actor. He's alone in a room for a good chunk of his screen time. Finney's a realist that has to be proactive about his situation, but at the end of the day he's still a kid who was plucked off the street and smart enough to know what's ultimately going to happen to him.

Mason Thames absolutely knocks it out of the park here, carrying the movie with confidence and a sense of reality that you need in order to make the supernatural stuff hit home. That's the Joe Hill sweet spot. Heart plus horror.

Commanding Your Attention

I have a feeling Madeleine McGraw, who plays Finney's younger sister, will be getting a lot of the attention because she has a really fun, funny character that can't help but steal every scene she's in. And she earns all the praise she's going to get from this movie. This is the same kind of role and performance that demands you pay attention to this child actor in much the same way Julia Butters commanded your attention in "Once Upon a Time in Hollywood. However,' I'm saying right here and now that the reason this movie landed the way it did for me was Thames' nuanced, complex and sympathetic work as the lead boy.

Before I get into talking about the villain, I do have to give a shoutout to the great character actor James Ransone, who brings in the right kind of lightheartedness at just the right moment. He's not in the movie a whole lot, but you certainly perk up when he is.

For his part, Hawke plays the villain perfectly. For the vast majority of the movie, he's wearing a segmented devil mask (designed by the legendary Tom Savini, no less), which is interesting as well. The only voices Finney hears while kidnapped are muffled, either by his abductor's mask or by the haze of static on the undead phone. The only clear voice he has to rely on is his own.

Playing a creepy child-killer is probably not a very attractive part for a lot of actors, especially those like Hawke who don't typically play villains, but the man fully commits and the results are horrifying. It's not the overly threatening moments with this guy that get under the skin. It's when his words are kind and loving when the skeevies really start crawling up and down your spine. The way The Grabber is portrayed is one of the biggest deviations from the short story. In the story he's essentially just John Wayne Gacy. This version is far creepier and complex and way scarier.

Derrickson and his crew took a neat little horror concept from an actually short short story and were able to expand upon it in ways that both make sense and don't feel like filler. There's a complicated family story barely hinted at in the short story that is more fleshed out here, particularly when it comes to Finney's little sister.

For my money, "The Black Phone" is more complete and effective than Derrickson's previous horror movie "Sinister" and is the first feature adaptation of Joe Hill's work that demands more big-screen Joe Hill adaptations. Hopefully, Hollywood answers that call.

/Film Rating: 8.5 out of 10

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The Black Phone review: Ethan Hawke horror inverts the suburban wish fulfilment of Stranger Things

Filmmaker scott derrickson’s first movie since 2016’s ‘doctor strange’ is brutal to its bones, article bookmarked.

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Dir: Scott Derrickson. Starring: Mason Thames, Madeleine McGraw, Jeremy Davies, James Ransone, Ethan Hawke. 15, 103 minutes

I wouldn’t blame you if you were a little sick of seeing kids on bicycles. You know the ones – packs of them, furiously pedalling down the street in order to halt whatever paranormal entity threatens their precious American suburbia. The Stranger Things via It via Ghostbusters: Afterlife pipeline of wistful nostalgia has been serving up countless Steven Spielbergian throwbacks for the past few years. And, from a distance, the new Blumhouse horror The Black Phone seems like more of the same. It is, after all, a feature-length adaptation of Joe Hill’s short story from 2004. Hill happens to be the son of Stephen King, the other Stev(ph)en at the helm of this single-minded pop culture takeover.

Here, the kids are indeed on bicycles. It’s 1978, with all its ringer shirts, casserole dishes and rotary phones. Baseball is still a hallowed pastime. And boys from all over the neighbourhood have been disappearing without a trace. Only put down the Christmas lights, Winona Ryder. The Black Phone , Scott Derrickson ’s first directorial effort since 2016’s Doctor Strange , is a confident return to his sharp-edged horror roots that only indulges in nostalgia so that it can viciously tear it apart. As much as Netflix likes to push the narrative that Stranger Things is skipping down the road to darkness, it’s still ultimately an exercise in wish fulfilment – pinned to the simple desire to turn back the years and once again feel the thrill of an adventure without adult supervision.

The Black Phone , meanwhile, is brutal to its very bones. Derrickson’s vision of childhood is one of constant and inescapable terror. The playground is a warzone, where a good day for young Finney (Mason Thames) is one where he escapes without any bruised ribs. At home, his alcoholic father (Jeremy Davies) wields a belt against him and sister Gwen (Madeleine McGraw). The missing posters around town bear faces that Finney dimly remembers. It’s said the boys were taken by The Grabber ( Ethan Hawke ). If you even say his name, he’ll appear with a fistful of balloons, ready to steal you away. In the end, he does come for Finney – posing as a hapless children’s magician, before tossing the boy in the back of his van and locking him in a basement with nothing but an old mattress and a disconnected phone.

As with Derrickson’s previous collaboration with Hawke, 2012’s Sinister , the director proves he can deliver an effective jumpscare – slick, and not too telegraphed. But there’s a thematic weight here that elevates The Black Phone above any of his previous work in the genre, a dark reminder of how often moral panics and bogeymen are conjured up in order to turn a society’s eyes away from the real and inescapable violence happening in people’s own homes. Hawke, tellingly, rejects every temptation to slide into showboating villainy. The Grabber is quiet, more John Wayne Gacy than Pennywise the Clown. He hides behind a devil-horned mask (designed by the legendary Tom Savini, known for his work with George A Romero), that’s segmented so that he can show his eyes or his mouth, but never both at the same time.

Elvis review: Baz Luhrmann’s sweaty, seductive biopic makes the King cool again

His evil is condensed almost entirely into a single shot, as he sits silently in a chair at the top of the stairs, shirtless with his broad, muscled shoulders and a belt in his hand. He wants Finney to escape his prison. He’s waiting. There’s a lot contained within that image, especially in the way it circles back to the beatings delivered by Finney’s father. Thames and McGraw shoulder that emotional intensity with real courage, while the latter also gets to deliver a few funny, foul-mouthed retorts like “dumb f***ing fart knockers”. These are smart kids. And Derrickson, who co-wrote the script with frequent collaborator C Robert Cargill, gradually starts to construct a fragile network of solidarity between them – not only linking brother and sister, but Finney and The Grabber’s previous victims. Not that there’s some cutesy team-up waiting at the story’s climax. The Black Phone commits to its tone until the very end. Keep the good times for other kids, on other bicycles.

‘The Black Phone’ is in cinemas now

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The Secret Service is investigating how a man who shot and injured Trump was able to get so close

The FBI is investigating Saturday’s shooting at a Trump rally in Pennsylvania as an attempted assassination and act of domestic terror. However authorities say, a motive has not yet been identified.

Former President Donald Trump was the target of an assassination attempt Saturday at a Pennsylvania rally, days before he was to accept the Republican nomination for a third time. The FBI said during a press conference late Saturday that they were not prepared to release the identity of the shooter and had not yet identified a motive for the assassination attempt.

Former Secret Service Agent Tim McCarthy was shot on the day there was an attempt to assassinate former President Ronald Reagan. As he watched the shooting at the Trump rally unfold on Saturday he noticed similar failures in the attempts to protect the president.

Republican presidential candidate former President Donald Trump is covered by U.S. Secret Service agents at a campaign rally, Saturday, July 13, 2024, in Butler, Pa. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)

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Republican presidential candidate former President Donald Trump is surrounded by U.S. Secret Service agents at a campaign rally, Saturday, July 13, 2024, in Butler, Pa. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)

Police snipers return fire after shots were fired while Republican presidential candidate former President Donald Trump was speaking at a campaign event in Butler, Pa., on Saturday, July 13, 2024. (AP Photo/Gene J. Puskar)

WASHINGTON (AP) — The U.S. Secret Service is investigating how a gunman armed with an AR-style rifle was able to get close enough to shoot and injure former President Donald Trump at a rally Saturday in Pennsylvania, in a devastating failure of one of the agency’s core duties.

The FBI on Sunday identified the shooter as Thomas Matthew Crooks, 20, of Bethel Park, Pennsylvania.

The gunman, who officials said was killed by Secret Service personnel, fired multiple shots at the stage from an “elevated position outside of the rally venue,” the agency said.

An Associated Press analysis of more than a dozen videos and photos taken at the Trump rally, as well as satellite imagery of the site, shows the shooter was able to get astonishingly close to the stage where the former president was speaking. A video posted to social media and geolocated by the AP shows Crooks’ body lying motionless on the roof of a manufacturing plant just north of the Butler Farm Show grounds, where Trump’s rally was held. A different image shows Crooks wearing a gray T-shirt with a black American flag on the right arm, with a bloody wound to his head.

The roof was fewer than 150 meters (164 yards) from where Trump was speaking, a distance from which a decent marksman could reasonably hit a human-sized target. For reference, 150 meters is a distance at which U.S. Army recruits must hit a human-sized silhouette to qualify with the M16 assault rifle in basic training. The AR-style rifle, like that of the gunman at the Trump rally, is the semiautomatic civilian version of the military M16.

President Joe Biden said Sunday he has directed an independent review of the security at the rally.

Biden said he also directed the U.S. Secret Service to review all security measures for the Republican National Convention, which begins Monday in Milwaukee. Audrey Gibson-Cicchino, the Secret Service’s coordinator for the convention, told reporters later the agency was satisfied with what she called its comprehensive planning for the Republican convention.

Biden urged Americans not to make assumptions about the motive of the shooter. He said investigators are working swiftly to investigate the attack.

“Unity is the most elusive goal of all,” he said, but “nothing is more important than that right now.”

What to know :

Timeline of events : How the assassination attempt on former President Donald Trump unfolded.
RNC: The Republican presidential ticket came together when Trump named JD Vance as his running mate. Follow live updates .
Biden’s response : The president says it was a “mistake” to say he wanted to put a “bull’s-eye” on Trump .
Key question : Officials are demanding to know how an armed man was able to get to the top of a building and shoot the former president .
A “man of conviction” : Victim Corey Comperatore, a former fire chief, used his body to shield his family from gunfire.

Calls for an investigation came from all sides.

Rep. Mark Green, a Tennessee Republican who chairs the House Committee on Homeland Security, sent a letter to Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas on Sunday raising questions about the shooting and demanding information about the former president’s Secret Service protection.

“The seriousness of this security failure and chilling moment in our nation’s history cannot be understated,” Green wrote.

The Secret Service did not have a speaker at a news conference Saturday night where FBI and Pennsylvania State Police officials briefed reporters on the shooting investigation. FBI Special Agent in Charge Kevin Rojek said it was “surprising” that the gunman was able to fire at the stage before he was killed.

Members of the Secret Service’s counter-sniper team and counterassault team were at the rally, according to two law enforcement officials. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they weren’t authorized to discuss details of the investigation.

The heavily armed counterassault team, whose Secret Service code name is “Hawkeye,” is responsible for eliminating threats so that other agents can shield and take away the person they are protecting. The counter-sniper team, known by the code name “Hercules,” uses long-range binoculars and is equipped with sniper rifles to deal with long-range threats.

Mayorkas said his department and the Secret Service are working with law enforcement to investigate the shooting. Maintaining the security of presidential candidates and their campaign events is one of the department’s “most vital priorities,” he said.

“We condemn this violence in the strongest possible terms and commend the Secret Service for their swift action today,” Mayorkas said. “We are engaged with President Biden, former President Trump and their campaigns, and are taking every possible measure to ensure their safety and security.“

Green also noted reports that the Secret Service had rebuffed requests from the Trump campaign for additional security. A spokesman for the Secret Service, Anthony Guglielmi, said on X Sunday that those allegations were “absolutely false” and that they had added resources and technology as the campaign’s travel increased.

Police snipers return fire after shots were fired while Republican presidential candidate former President Donald Trump was speaking at a campaign event in Butler, Pa., on July 13, 2024. (AP Photo/Gene J. Puskar)

Green said he would be talking with Secret Service Director Kimberly Cheatle on Sunday.

Former top Secret Service agents told The AP that Crooks should never have been allowed to gain access to the roof, and the agency will have to figure out how that happened. They said such a lapse could have been caused by officers neglecting their posts or a flaw in the event’s security plan.

The agency is “going to have to go through the security plan and interview a number of people from the director on down” to figure out what went wrong, said Stephen Colo, who retired in 2003 as an assistant director after a 27-year career in the service.

Colo said presidential candidates and former presidents don’t typically get the same level of protection as the sitting president. In fact, Colo said he was surprised that the agency had staffed the event with a counter-sniper team. Such a valuable resource — there are not many of those highly trained agents — is usually reserved for the president. Candidates don’t usually get such teams.

Timothy McCarthy, a former agent who retired from the agency in 1994, said the Secret Service “better be doing a deep dive into what happened there and doing whatever it takes to figure it out” because the gunman should not have been able to occupy such a vantage point.

“How did that person get up on that building?” said McCarthy, 75, who in 1981 took a bullet when President Ronald Reagan was shot outside the Washington Hilton Hotel. “How did that happen? I mean, that’s the key to the entire thing. And what measures were put in place to prevent it?”

James Comer, a Kentucky Republican who is the House Oversight Committee chairman, said he contacted the Secret Service for a briefing and called on Cheatle to appear for a hearing. Comer said his committee will send a formal invitation soon.

“Political violence in all forms is un-American and unacceptable. There are many questions and Americans demand answers,” Comer said in a statement.

U.S. Rep. Ritchie Torres, a New York Democrat, called for investigating “security failures” at the rally.

“The federal government must constantly learn from security failures in order to avoid repeating them, especially when those failures have implications for the nation,” Torres said.

Wisconsin Gov. Tony Evers, a Democrat, posted on X that he and his staff are in contact with security planning coordinators ahead of the Republican National Convention set to begin Monday in Milwaukee. “We cannot be a country that accepts political violence of any kind — that is not who we are as Americans,” Evers said.

The FBI said it will lead the investigation into the shooting, working with the Secret Service and local and state law enforcement.

Attorney General Merrick Garland said the Justice Department “will bring every available resource to bear to this investigation.”

“My heart is with the former President, those injured, and the family of the spectator killed in this horrific attack,” Garland said in a statement. “We will not tolerate violence of any kind, and violence like this is an attack on our democracy.”

Associated Press writers Del Quentin Wilber, Colleen Long and Zeke Miller in Washington contributed to this report.

Early Prime Day quicklinks

When is Amazon Prime Day 2024?

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What should I buy?
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Amazon prime day deals 2024: everything to know about the sale, plus tips, and tricks.

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Amazon Prime Day has grown into one of the biggest sales events of the year, with discounts rivaling those of Black Friday and Cyber Monday. And with so many retailers selling on Amazon, Prime members can save on just about anything, from viral beauty products to big-screen TVs.

Prime Day is the first major deal holiday of the year, so it's an awesome chance to score summer discounts on big-ticket items and household staples. Amazon's 10th Prime Day event is officially underway, today July 16 until tomorrow, July 17. We're keeping tabs on all of the latest Prime Day news and deals.

Shop the best Amazon Prime Day deals

Best Amazon Prime Day deals

The best Prime Day deals so far include all-time lows on brands like Apple, Sony, Vitamix, iRobot, Dyson, Ninja, and, of course, Amazon-owned products like the Fire TV , Kindle e-reader , and Echo smart speakers .

The Apple Watch Series 9 includes the latest S9 processor, a 2000-nit always-on Retina display, expanded Apple Health integrations with Siri, and a unique single-hand gesture to answer calls and interact with widgets.

Beloved across social media, the Ninja Creami is a countertop ice cream maker that can produce frozen treats within minutes. It's one of the fastest ways to make milkshakes, ice cream, and gelato at home.

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The pint-sized Ninja Creami dupe from Dash has been going viral on TikTok lately as an affordable way to customize your own ice cream, gelato, and sorbet creations.

Samsonite makes some of our favorite suitcases and offers incredible value at a moderate price. This set comes with a carry-on spinner and a large checked suitcase, and both are covered by a 10-year warranty.

Bose’s QuietComfort Ultra once more put the brand on top, with best-in-class noise canceling wrapped in a sleek and comfy design.

Hisense's U6N is one of the most budget-friendly Mini LED TVs on the market. It can deliver up to 600 nits of brightness with wide color support, making it an excellent entry-level HDR display.

This advanced electric razor offers the most effective, close shave out of all razors we've tried.

This magnetic portable battery pack from Anker has a capacity of 10,000mAh, which is more juice than Apple's MagSafe battery pack, which is rated at 1,460mAh.

This tiny plant set from Lego is designed for adults to enjoy assembling and then displaying. They're a fun way to display some greenery without worrying about any maintenance.

The C3 delivers excellent contrast thanks to its OLED Evo panel, and unlike similarly priced Samsung OLED TVs, it supports Dolby Vision.

Amazon Prime Day is underway now through July 17, 2024. The main sale began on the 16th at 12:01 a.m. PT (3 a.m. ET). Amazon will be unleashing fresh deals throughout the sale, though many discounts will be available both days. Lightning deals will be staggered throughout the 48-hour event and will only run for a limited time, or until stock sells out.

Amazon Prime Day is the retailer's annual mega sale and one of the major benefits of Prime membership. It's a two-day sales event, usually during the summer, that features products from every category, from fashion staples to hot new tech.

Though it used to be a deal holiday on a much smaller scale, Prime Day has grown exponentially since the first one in 2015. Now, you can find almost everything on sale for all-time low prices, matching discounts we see during Black Friday and Cyber Monday.

What should I buy during Amazon Prime Day?

Everything is fair game to buy during Amazon Prime Day. Whether you've been holding out on a pricey new TV or just need to stock up on toiletries, Prime Day is a good time to make your move.

We're seeing incredible prices on tech, including 4K TVs , Fire TV streaming devices , Apple products, Kindle e-readers , PC gaming accessories, Echo smart speakers , and top headphones picks. Prime Day tech deals feature brands like Logitech, Bose, Jabra, Sony, Roku, Samsung, TCL, and more.

If you're looking for style and beauty deals during Prime Day, brands like Tommy Hilfiger, Tatcha, Laneige, Levi's, Carhartt, Anastasia Beverly Hills, Adidas, and Marc Jacobs all feature products at rare low prices. That means skincare, makeup, shoes, men's clothing, women's fashion, and accessories will all be available for less.

Home and kitchen products are also seeing no shortage of Prime Day deals, with big names like Dyson, Shark, iRobot, Philips, KitchenAid, Nespresso, Casper, Leesa, and Coop down to all-time lows for the event. So, whether you need an air fryer , robot vacuum , mattress , or just some sturdy mixing bowls, Prime Day is a good time to buy.

You don't need to be focused on fancy new gadgets or treatments to shop smart during Amazon Prime Day either. We also catch tons of affordable household essentials available for even less every year, like toilet paper, dish soap, doggy bags, and makeup wipes. These deals are sweet since they save you money on stuff you needed to buy anyway.

How long do Prime Day deals last?

How long a Prime Day deal lasts differs between items, but in general, the best discounts start during the event and end before the 48-hour holiday is over. Some will last the whole two days while others will only last one, so it's always wise to act on a good sale when you see it. Lightning deals especially go fast, the most popular of which dwindle away in less than an hour.

I always recommend buying a product you've had your eye on as soon as it's highlighted as a Prime Day deal. Regardless of how long it's set to last, oftentimes, the best sales run out of stock, resulting in shipping dates being pushed out or the deal no longer being offered at all. We'll be providing all of the deal context you need to shop confidently and quickly, so be sure to check our roundups of the best discounts when the event rolls around.

Do you need to be a Prime member to shop Amazon Prime Day?

Amazon Prime Day is locked to Prime members only. It's one of the major benefits of subscribing to the service, in addition to other perks like free two-day shipping and Prime Video streaming.

If you have yet to become a member, you can sign up for a free 30-day trial to test it out. This should allow you to shop the sale, but it's not a guarantee since sometimes retailers will lock out free members from shopping the best deals.

Do other stores participate in Prime Day?

Although Prime Day is an Amazon-specific event, it's grown so large that other major retailers have started kicking off competing sales to overlap with it. If past years are any indication, Walmart, Target, and Best Buy will be holding competing sales.

These are definitely worth checking out; they often match the best deals on popular items you can find from Prime Day. We'll also be rounding these deals up so you can shop from the retailer that best suits you, whether you're a Target Circle cardholder, My Best Buy Plus member, or Walmart Plus subscriber.

Prime Day occurs in several other countries, but not all of them. Here's a list of countries where Prime Day will be available to shop:

Netherlands
Saudi Arabia
The United Arab Emirates
The United States
The United Kingdom

Want to see what else Amazon has on sale right now? We've spotted some hefty price cuts on electronics, fashion, home, kitchen, laptops, and more on its main deals page .

Main content

After assassination attempt, Trump and Biden seek calm, unity

Medium Text
LATEST DEVELOPMENTS
Biden orders review of how gunman got so close
Gunman worked as a dietary aide at a nursing home
Four-day convention gets under way on Monday
Trump to name his vice presidential running mate

SUSPECT A NURSING HOME AIDE

Demonstration in support of former U.S. President Donald Trump, in Huntington Beach

SPECTATOR KILLED PROTECTING FAMILY

Reporting by Nathan Layne, Gabriella Borter and Soren Larson in Bethel Park, Pennsylvania; Additional reporting by Katharine Jackson, Sarah N. Lynch, Richard Cowan, Caitlin Webber, Nandita Bose, Ismail Shakil, Joseph Ax, Andrew Hay and Kanishka Singh; Writing by Frank McGurty, Scott Malone and Michelle Nichols; Editing by Lisa Shumaker, Howard Goller and Lincoln Feast.

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Washington-based correspondent covering campaigns and Congress. Previously posted in Rio de Janeiro, Sao Paulo and Santiago, Chile, and has reported extensively throughout Latin America. Co-winner of the 2021 Reuters Journalist of the Year Award in the business coverage category for a series on corruption and fraud in the oil industry. He was born in Massachusetts and graduated from Harvard College.

Helen Coster is a U.S. Presidential Election Correspondent at Reuters, where she writes a mix of spot news, enterprise and analysis stories, with a focus on the Republican Party and conservative media. Prior to 2024 she covered the media industry for Reuters, and was also a Senior Editor on Reuters’ Commentary team. A graduate of Princeton University, she has reported from six countries, including Pakistan, India, and Greece.

Investigation begins after gunfire during a campaign rally by Trump in Butler

Former White House official is indicted for acting as South Korea agent

A foreign policy specialist who once worked for the CIA and on the White House National Security Council (NSC) has been indicted on U.S. charges she worked as an unregistered agent of South Korea's government in exchange for luxuries and other gifts.

U.S. President Joe Biden addresses the nation from the Oval Office in the White House, in Washington

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COMMENTS

The Black Phone movie review & film summary (2022)
Underpinned by emotional performances across the board and a commanding atmosphere, The Black Phone aces its foundational qualities and allows its nuances to take control.
The Black Phone
Finney, a shy but clever 13-year-old boy, is abducted by a sadistic killer and trapped in a soundproof basement where screaming is of little use. When a disconnected phone on the wall begins to ...
'The Black Phone' Review: The Dead Have Your Number
The Black Phone Rated R for bloody apparitions and blasphemous words. Running time: 1 hour 42 minutes. In theaters.
'The Black Phone' Review: Ethan Hawke as a Serial Killer
'The Black Phone' Review: Ethan Hawke in a Serial-Killer Movie with Some Nightmare Images but Less Fear Than Meets the Eye Reviewed at Tribeca Film Festival, June 18, 2022.
Movie Review: The Black Phone, with Ethan Hawke
Movie Review: In The Black Phone, a new horror film based on a Joe Hill story, Ethan Hawke plays a creepy psycho called The Grabber who kidnaps teenage boys. James Ransone, Jeremy Davies, and ...
The Black Phone (2021)
The Black Phone: Directed by Scott Derrickson. With Mason Thames, Madeleine McGraw, Ethan Hawke, Jeremy Davies. After being abducted and locked in a basement, a boy starts receiving calls on a disconnected phone from the killer's previous victims.
The Black Phone Review
This is an advance, spoiler-free review of The Black Phone, which will debut in theaters on Feb. 2, 2022.
'The Black Phone': Film Review
The Black Phone. The Bottom Line A very effective kid-in-peril thriller with a supernatural twist. Like the boogeyman in King's It, the Grabber approaches his prey in the garb of a clown. But ...
'The Black Phone' Review: Scott Derrickson Adapts Joe Hill
'The Black Phone' Review: Scott Derrickson Dials Into Realistic Terrors with Arresting Joe Hill Adaptation Ethan Hawke plays the villain in this sleek, stressful, and violent slice of horror.
The Black Phone review: Ethan Hawke rings in the nightmares
The call is coming from inside the house. The twist and the gist of The Black Phone is that those calls are actually good news for the boy trapped in a madman's basement — and maybe his best ...
The Black Phone
Rotten Tomatoes, home of the Tomatometer, is the most trusted measurement of quality for Movies & TV. The definitive site for Reviews, Trailers, Showtimes, and Tickets
'The Black Phone' Review: A Thrilling And Terrifying Crowd-Pleaser
Penned by Scott Derrickson and C. Robert Cargill, this Derrickson-directed adaptation of Joe Hill's short story, The Black Phone is a refreshingly unpretentious and relatively unambitious ...
The Black Phone Review: Coming-of-Age Gets Scary in a Great ...
Universal Pictures. The finale of The Black Phone makes it clear that a lot of the film is a coming-of-age allegory about standing up for yourself and dealing with the world's onslaught of threats ...
The Black Phone Review
The Black Phone Review. Denver, 1978. Teenager Finney (Mason Thames) and his little sister Gwen (Madeleine McGraw) live under the threat of violence from their alcoholic father (Jeremy Davies ...
The Black Phone
Movie Review The phone hangs on the wall, black and dead. Dead as the children who slept there, ate there, were beaten there. Were murdered there. Finney's not the first boy to find himself in this cracked, barren Denver basement in 1978. The man— The Grabber, people call him—prepared the place well. The bed is fastened to the floor. The toilet stands in a corner. The metal door latches ...
Review: Thriller 'The Black Phone' is captivating, really
The kid-centric thriller "The Black Phone" is a very satisfying balancing act of a movie that has elements of supernatural, psychological suspense and horror but never falls heavily into a single camp. It also has one of the most satisfying ending of a horror-thriller in recent years.
The Black Phone
The Black Phone - Metacritic. 2022. R. Universal Pictures. 1 h 43 m. Summary Finney Shaw, a shy but clever 13-year-old boy, is abducted by a sadistic killer and trapped in a soundproof basement where screaming is of little use. When a disconnected phone on the wall begins to ring, Finney discovers that he can hear the voices of the killer's ...
The Black Phone Review: Scott Derrickson Delivers The Best Joe Hill
Scott Derrickson's new horror movie is the ideal blend of heart and horror, with Ethan Hawke and newcomer Mason Thames shouldering the film.
The Black Phone review: Ethan Hawke horror inverts the suburban wish
The Black Phone, Scott Derrickson 's first directorial effort since 2016's Doctor Strange, is a confident return to his sharp-edged horror roots that only indulges in nostalgia so that it can ...
The Black Phone Movie Review
Violent but effective horror tale about kidnapped teens. Read Common Sense Media's The Black Phone review, age rating, and parents guide.
The Black Phone
The Black Phone premiered at Fantastic Fest on September 25, 2021, and opened in US theaters after several delays on June 24, 2022. It was an unexpected hit at the box office and finished its theatrical run grossing $161.4 million globally. The film received generally positive reviews from the critics, who praised its performances but were divided on its concept. The success of The Black Phone ...
'The Black Phone' Review: Don't Answer That Call
The Black Phone was probably the horror movie I was most excited for this year. Based on a Joe Hill short story, and directed by Scott Derrickson, who directed one of my favorite recent horror ...
The Black Phone is a bone-chilling, atmospheric horror movie
The Black Phone is a bone-chilling, atmospheric horror movie Sure to leave a lasting, terrifying impression, the new horror movie will make you afraid of the sound of a ringing phone.
Monster Summer Trailer
The Black Phone star Mason Thames is gearing up for a Monster Summer, a spooky family adventure from director David Henrie ("Wizards of Waverly Place"). A brand new trailer debuted today ...
Secret Service investigating how Trump rally shooter got so close
The U.S. Secret Service is investigating how a gunman armed with an AR-style rifle was able to get close enough to shoot and injure Trump at his rally in Pennsylvania.
This rugged Blackview phone truly has it all
Are you looking for an Android 13 phone that offers thermal imaging, night vision, and won't break the bank? Get this on Amazon Prime Day for $350.
Amazon Prime Day deals 2024: Everything to know about the sale, plus
Prime Day deals are live. Here's everything you need to know about the big event and its exclusive deals.
After assassination attempt, Trump and Biden seek calm, unity
Donald Trump arrived on Sunday in Milwaukee, where he will be formally nominated as the Republican presidential candidate later this week after surviving an assassination attempt that has ...
Trump v Biden latest: 'Disaster for Ukraine and Europe': Concerns over
Trump v Biden latest: 'Disaster for Ukraine and Europe': Concerns over Trump's VP pick - as comments about UK resurface. Donald Trump received rapturous applause at the Republican National ...

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