Film Review — The Black Phone
★★★☆☆
Abducted by a sadistic serial killer, a young boy finds himself able to communicate with the killer’s past victims through a disconnected black phone.
Indeed there is life after an MCU death. Bouncing back following his Doctor Strange disappointment, Scott Derrickson’s The Black Phone is an intriguing, if somewhat unambitious, return to his old horror stomping grounds.
Reuniting with Sinister star Ethan Hawke, Derrickson once again proves his supernatural horror credentials. It might be a little tame for some tastes, but what The Black Phone lacks in outright terror, it makes up for with atmosphere, an unrelenting feeling of unease, and some legitimately nail-biting sequences.
Critical is Hawke, who haunts the film with a delightfully demonic presence, his Grabber antagonist an instant modern horror icon and likely a new Halloween cosplay favourite.
But there is an unshakable feeling that we’ve seen this all before. Comparisons to IT, Stranger Things and even The Shining are inevitable and inescapable, further compounded by the fact that Joe Hill, author of the original short the film is based on, is the son of Stephen King himself. Clearly, the apple hasn’t fallen far from the tree.
It makes total sense why this was moved to a wide summer release. It’s the very definition of a “mid horror”, a film tailor-made for the multiplex: scary, but not scary to the point of requiring some form of counselling afterwards. An enjoyable but mostly forgettable chiller.
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