The Black Phone dials a wrong number
Adaptation of Joe Hill's short story doesn't scare up many chills, despite Ethan Hawke's best efforts
Film Reviews The Black Phone
Based on a short story by Joe Hill, The Black Phone hits a sweet spot regarding its subject matter, its setting, its tone, and its star that should allow it to resonate with both hard-core horror fans and casual viewers—“the Conjuring crowd,” so to speak, that comes out only occasionally and under circumstances like these to be terrified in a theater. Like A Nightmare On Elm Street, it focuses on a child kidnapper (and eventually, a killer). Like Stranger Things, it takes place in the not-so-distant past, and reimagines that era according to the cinematic nostalgia of the filmmakers (in this case, director Scott Derrickson and screenwriter C. Robert Cargill), from old Stephen King adaptations to the adolescent meanness of The Bad News Bears. And like the Derrickson and Cargill’s beloved Sinister, it stars Ethan Hawke.
Unfortunately, Hill’s short story does not make for an especially good film—or this adaptation doesn’t make a good one out of it, anyway. When he wasn’t helming Doctor Strange or the remake of The Day The Earth Stood Still, Derrickson developed a pedigree for creating handsome, unsettling images, not only in Sinister but The Exorcism Of Emily Rose. He does so again here, but fails to connect the important dots—or at least answer some vital questions—that would make this serial killer/ghost story truly haunting.
Set in 1978, the film stars Mason Thames as Finney Shaw, a kid who gets bullied at school by his classmates and bullied at home by his abusive father (Jeremy Davies). This despite a tough little sister Gwen (Madeleine McGraw) who stands up for him on the playground, and a pitching arm that even the other team calls “mint.” But when Finney is abducted by a serial killer dubbed “The Grabber” by locals, he’s forced to summon strength he didn’t know he had to find a way to escape.
Locked in a threadbare basement outfitted only with a mysterious telephone whose cord is cut, Finney is understandably skeptical when that phone unexpectedly rings. But when the voice on the other end turns out to be one of the Grabber’s previous victims, he listens in the hope of gleaning advice to help him avoid certain death. In the meantime, Gwen cultivates a Shining-like ability to communicate with the spirits of those same victims, which she uses to try and find Finney when the local police run out of tangible leads.
There are, of course, more complications and complexities to the story that Cargill and Derrickson tell, but we’ll leave them for you to discover. Part of the problem is with the way they tell the story, where these elements overlap but don’t all connect effectively. First of all, it never seems clear exactly what The Grabber wants, or why he doesn’t just kill Finney outright. Mind you, other than murdering horny teenagers, Jason Voorhees’ motive was a one-dimensional pathology, and Michael Myers was simply “pure evil.” Notwithstanding The Grabber’s elision of being a “child murderer” but not a child molester, a cannibal, etc., the question is, what is his goal with this kid, since he isn’t murdering him immediately? He seems to keep Finney around for a long time for no purpose other than to have the boy to experience a coming-of-age moment.
More logistically, Derrickson whiffs on the opportunity to explore the physical space in which Finney is trapped. Instead he relies upon spooky but often meaningless imagery to rachet up tension that should escalate because of the urgency of his (hopeful) escape. The most egregious example of this revolves around a barricaded window that Finney at one point manages to unseal. Although The Grabber enters and leaves the room several times after that point, Derrickson never shows the window again, so it’s unclear whether this dangerous breach of his basement prison is ever detected by the fastidious and obviously thoughtful murderer. But the nightmarish visions, and the broken Coke bottles and other props that Finney uses at his ghostly predecessors’ suggestions, accumulate without building to something that achieves an overall meaning, much less lasting effect.
Hidden behind a modular mask that suggests a bespectacled and smiling Guy Fawkes, Hawke does his best to breathe menace into The Grabber. But without a sense of purpose to make his abductions into terrifying gauntlets, there’s nothing uniquely frightening about him as a villain. Part of the problem might be that young Mason Thames just doesn’t seem consistently frightened enough. Meanwhile, you can’t help but feel sorry for Jeremy Davies as Finney and Gwen’s abusive dad. It’s the kind of role he depressingly excels at, but this film doesn’t allow it enough depth for the character’s moments of tenderness or regret to mitigate the mistreatment of his children.
Ultimately, Cargill and Derrickson lay down tracks for two different provocative ideas—a masked serial killer and a family that unwittingly can communicate with the killer’s victims. But those concepts, much like the film’s needle-drop soundtrack and 1970s period re-creation (down to some racist and homophobic slurs), never tie together into a cohesive story. Which is surprising, because The Grabber is exactly the kind of urban legend that would strike terror into junior high kids, and to make a movie set in an era when that legend would be shared with feverish excitement by kids worried they might become the killer’s next victim (and with no internet to consult) seems like a home run in the making.
Answer the call of The Black Phone if you dare. Just be aware that, much like the severed cord dangling underneath the device, there’s a crucial disconnect between the provocative ideas that it sets up, and what it ultimately delivers.
69 Comments
I had a very different reaction to this, found it a cracker-jack little horror that wasn’t super scary, but very creepy and thought it connected everything really well.Found a couple bits of this review particularly odd:First of all, it never seems clear exactly what The Grabber wants, or why he doesn’t just kill Finney outright.This was pretty clearly explained – the Grabber wants to play with his victims, he wants them to slot into a particular role – which allows the Grabber to justify to himself what he’s doing – by refusing to do so, Finney prolongs “the game.”More logistically, Derrickson whiffs on the opportunity to explore the physical space in which Finney is trapped. Also find this odd – the exploration of the space, and how Finney moves within it and uses it, are key to the film’s outcome. Overall, there were some ambiguities in the film, but I found that most of them added to the effectiveness of its psychological horror. My one big criticism is that Davies’s character is a bit one-note and his ending doesn’t work, but overall I thought this was great.
Ever since the Kinjaing, with the exception of Iggy and Dowd, the reviewers here haven’t exactly been known for paying attention to detail. Hawke could have turned to the camera and explained his character’s motivation directly to the audience and there’s still a good chance that the reviewer would have been too busy watching The Masked Singer clips on another device to notice.
How about the reviewer saying that Jason Voorhees had no known motive? Jason killed anyone at Crystal Lake because he saw his mother get decapitated. He did not kill before that. And the sequel, IIRC, literally begins with a shot of an altar devoted to his mother’s decapitated head. So it’s not exactly subtle. He’s killing to serve and avenge his mother.It was heavily implied that Jason was severely developmentally disabled. It is assumed he died drowning because horny counselors were too busy hooking up to do their job. His mother then murders counselors blaming them for her son’s perceived death.Jason indeed survived the drowning, and extremely traumatized and terrified, continues living at Crystal Lake in secret. It isnt until his mother is killed that he goes on the offensive, associating anyone on camp grounds with those that would have allowed him to die as well as those who killed his mother.That is his motive. It is hard to imagine anyone seeing the first two installments of the franchise and not seeing that.
That’s a solid explanation. The latter, sillier Friday the 13th films just have him as a straight up slasher, but the first two establish his motivation and that of his mother.
Yeah, Michael Meyers is the more unknowably motiveless.
Um, he’s evil?
At least in the beginning, I think eventually he is possessed by a spirit of some evil Celtic ritual or something, but then maybe not. And then he was in the Rob Zombie movies where his motivation was that he was a character in a Rob Zombie movie
I mean, right? What was he thinking with The Love Guru?
There’s a reason “Baby Driver” didn’t feature masks of his character from The Love Guru: nobody watched The Love Guru.
To be fair on the Jason stuff, his motivation gets a bit muddled when he becomes a body possessing worm demon and when he goes to space
First, I don’t recall Jason witnessing Pamela’s decapitation. He finds her body and head.Second, I don’t know that it’s fair to nail down Jason’s motives based on the first 2-3 movies in a 10+ movie series that eventually includes toxic waste mutation and demon worms.
My favourite was the review for the mini-series Candy, which was based on a true story of Candy Montgomery killing the wife of the man she was fuckin’ with an axe. Alison Foreman decried that Candy was not being portrayed sympathetically enough for being the real victim, and that by not defending women who sleep with with married men and wreck their marriages and then kill the wives of those men, they were slut-shaming. Candy Montgomery was acquitted, by the way. So apparently that wasn’t enough for Alison.
In the version of the review I’m looking at now, Gilchrist says that Jason’s motive was a “a one-dimensional pathology,” not that he had no known motive. Did it say something different before and this got stealth-edited?
It didn’t say that he had no motive. Just that it’s one dimensional
He didn’t say Jason had no motive, he said, “Mind you, *other than* murdering horny teenagers, Jason Voorhees’ motive was a one-dimensional pathology”
The one-dimensional pathology motive is his mother.
This review spells the lead actor’s name wrong… twice no less. Talk about not paying attention to details.
Oh, I dunno. I really enjoy Caroline’s When Romance Met Comedy. Or do you not consider those reviews?
“When Romance Met Comedy” ended in February.
That’s a shame. I wasn’t aware.Of course Fauxcault said “since the Kinjaing”, which was well before then.
Oh I definitely love When Romance Met Comedy; ditto Tom Breihan’s The Popcorn Champs. I guess neither came to mind when I wrote my original comment because both are running features rather than individual reviews, but you’re right that there are other contemporary AV Club writers like Siede and Breihan that pay attention to detail.
Ah, totally makes sense. Features, not proper reviews. I just reread my response and it probably sounds snarkier than I intended.
Oh no, you’re fine! No snark inferred. You’re right that Siede does a great job with her reviews for that series. Lots of great details and thoughtful, engaging writing.
I spent a while wondering what other device The Masked Singer would clip on, and why the reviewer would watch him do it.
It really shows, doesn’t it? The whole reviews now tend to stink of someone idly scrolling on their phone, perhaps only looking up at the TV when there’s a particularly loud noise or bright flash.If I could be arsed, I’d check their twitter accounts, because I’ll bet you they’ll be live-tweeting this shit the whole time they’re meant to be watching.“Lol. Am reviewing @hawke_ethan’s Black Phone for AV Club. It’s starting.”“Any1 got any idea for what snacks I should have?”“Do u think lights on or lights off for horror movs? Reply for lights on, like for light off.”“OMFG this vid popped up in my feed about the Jan 6 hearing!”“WTF is this guy doing picking up the phone- oh, it’s black phone! Subtle!”“Has @hawke_ethan been accused of sexual assault yet? Lemme know, might be an article in that.”“I never much cared for grilled cheese sandwiches. Not really movie food.”“WTF is happening in this movie?!?”
To be fair, most audience critics kinda function on the knee jerk first few minutes im bored or i like it approach these days. If their confused or the plot isn’t telling them exactly what’s going on quick enough they tapp out and call it trash. Add to that if it’s a popular movie with the critics or people, laymen will approach it with tripidation and claim it’s overrated if they can find one nitpick or plot contrivence which they will mistake and lable as a plot hole and express how it’s 5/10 at best then claim a movie from their childhood far surpassed it and dealt with similar subjects. Most audiences also watch movies half paying attention these days, and use their phones or twitter and stop to get up and do other things then express how the movie didnt keep their attention and is to blame wheter true or not I think we need to engage the film as much as it’s trying or atleast engage a bit, to try understand and enjoy it. Most films arent trying to be C rated. Just by standard deviation we should have more movies coming out that arent so bad but lately everything hits that lower range…actually if we really use the entire grade pool i guess AVClub is right…C it is. lol.
Can I ask where you saw it? I loved the short story and I’ve been waiting for it to come out so I could stream it, but it seems to never be released.
Dublin, Ireland. Came out in wide release here, last week I think.
The trailer came off like the physical space was a big plot point. With the wide angles and showcase of all items in the rooms. I will say sometimes you watch a film and get someone else’s interpretation and its so off from yours you feel like you watched different films. Usually it’s cause my family can’t watch a movie without going on their phones. Next time you watch a movie with pals, pause every time they look at their phone. Maybe movies should have a button that keeps playing dialogue but when you unpause it, the movie jumps back to where you paused. So those looking down wont say don’t pause it im watching…and once they look up bamb they are put back where the movie left off and dont ask what’s going on i missed it rewind back.
I saw it last night and loved it, I plan on seeing it again this weekend. I think the review is mostly way off base, I get the thing about the window, bugged me too. But that’s just a minor nitpick considering how fantastic the movie was, there’s probably a deleted scene that explains it.
I also found it curious that the review seems to criticize the “needle-drop soundtrack.” I literally just came from watching it, and there are a total of seven tracks listed in the credits. Two of them are movie/TV theme songs playing on licensed clips during the film, and two others play during the credit roll. That leaves three actual needle drops in the film, and “Fox on the Run” is the only one that really sticks out. Compare that with something like, say, “Cruella,” which had more than 30, and they seemed to come with every pathetic attempt at a joke or scene transition.I’ll grant that it was a little weird that the Grabber never noticed the window grate missing, but he also doesn’t fully enter the basement after that except for one crucial moment at the end of the second act (where he literally had his hands full at the time), and during the climax, where he is quite preoccupied with other things, so you can suspend disbelief just enough.But more importantly, motivations don’t have to be fully spelled out or delved into so long as they work within the film’s internal logic. “The Game,” as it’s described, is a perfectly cromulent explanation, especially given the different faces on Hawke’s mask to illustrate his mood and intentions. That’s more than enough. Even the abusive dad’s arc works to a certain degree. He’s lost his wife, leading to a depression where he drinks heavily, and he takes out a lot of anger on Gwen because she exhibits similar signs to what he believes was his wife’s mental illness. It doesn’t excuse his actions, but it does effectively explain them. And then once the terror comes to his doorstep with Finn’s abduction, the desperation comes through quite naturally, making him take visible stock of his actions and his own trauma without bogging things down with overwrought exposition. It’s not a perfect portrayal, but it worked within context.And as for the bullying, it’s called 1978. There never needed to be a reason.
Yeah, particularly because the review’s inherent criticisms of the needle drops seem to be that they don’t help tie the film together. I’m as tired of rampant needle dropping as the next guy (is the next guy tired of them? I am!) – but the two aspects of them that I find most egregious are when they’re reaching for a cool factor by being particularly obscure, or when they’re used to comment on action. I’d agree with you that in this movie, they’re not obtrusive at all, just there for a bit of period detail – especially compared to something like the Guardians of the Galaxy or an Edgar Wright film (or if you’ve seen the recent series The Offer, about the making of The Godfather, yeesh).To me, his not noticing the window actually added to the basement sequences’ dream-like, hallucinatory effect and ramped up the “wait, is that real” factor.
The actor’s name is “Mason” Thames rather than “Madison”.
Man the writing on this site has gone to shit. Can’t write a coherent review, and can’t even get the fuckin actors’ names right
I wouldn’t entirely blame the writers. This smells like a “more emphasis on amount of production than quality” mandate handed down from on high. I’ve been there. Mistakes were definitely made.
“two different provocative ideas—a masked serial killer and a family that unwittingly can communicate with the killer’s victims”Are those provocative? I would say they’re more along the lines of “incredibly cliched and done many many times over.” So, you know… pretty much the exact opposite of provocative.
I feel this movie had been being teased for years.
You get the name of the lead actor wrong, twice. Spanfeller’s 9-year old nephew is clearly not working out as an editor.
Maybe she could help me diagram what the hell this 63-word sentence is trying to say?“Based on a short story by Joe Hill, The Black Phone hits a sweet spot regarding its subject matter, its setting, its tone, and its star that should allow it to resonate with both hard-core horror fans and casual viewers—“the Conjuring crowd,” so to speak, that comes out only occasionally and under circumstances like these to be terrified in a theater.”
Despite this review, I’m hoping this is an unmitigated success. Sinister was really well set up, but the last 3rd marred what was going to be my favorite horror movie of its year. The hope is they take what worked from Sinister but this time stick the landing.
Sinister’s one of my favorite horror movies of the 2000s – just curious, what didn’t you like about the last 3rd?
Seeing in the theater the first half to 2/3 of the movie was going great, the sense of dread was really working, the 8mm movies were frightening, it was like “this will be some prime nightmare fuel for several days”. Then the scene with the ghost children happened. When it started I thought like the preceedeing scenes it was going to be a really scary one. But that quickly faded when it became apparent that Ellison wasn’t ever catching a glance of the kids. He never seemed particularly scared, between the slow mo and the way they moved out of sight before he could turn to see them, it struck me as unintentional comedy. That scene left me cold but I hadn’t written off the movie. (I still haven’t written off the movie as I think the early going is great) It soon lost me when it explained away and revealed that as scary as Bughuul looked, he wasn’t going to do any direct harm. He lost all menace to where the jump scare at the very end was meh.Ultimately, comes down to not liking or not being scared by the conclusion they came up with. At least for me, it would have been a classic if they could have kept the tension going through to the end.I can see why people are fans of the movie, it just didn’t work for me at the end.
Man, 2012 sucked for horror movies. All I can find that might be better than Sinister is Absentia or maybe The Woman in Black. As far as I can tell, the consensus is that Sinister was, indeed, the best.
Cabin in the Woods would like a word with you
Also, 100 Bloody Acres, The Battery, Berbarian Sound Studio, Citadel, Excision, Harpoon, John Dies at the End, Lovely Molly, Maniac and Resolution are all pretty great horror movies from 2012
Got the name of the lead actor wrong, twice. The boss’s 9-year old cousin is really not working out as a copy editor, you guys.
Well, there go those 100% on Rotten Tomatoes ads for the film! Is it hard writing a review knowing it destroys an entire marketing strategy? Or does it bring joy?
Tyler Smith was asked the same question when he gave a negative review to Toy Story 4.
Why should the reviewer care about a movies marketing strategy?
Shold they write a dishonest review to aid in marketing strategy?
I’d like to see this, but man, it seems the trailer shows the whole damn movie.
It seems like that, but it doesn’t.
To an extent, this is true. The trailer does give a pretty accurate outline of the majority of the plot beats. But it’s still worth seeing because of how it’s executed. Among the finer points:- The film takes its time before getting to the abduction and the ghosts, effectively setting the dour mood.
– I only counted four jump scares, and three of them are relevant to the way the film plays out, rather than just being a cheap attempt to elicit an involuntary reflex. One of them was even legitimately startling, because it wasn’t telegraphed 0r reasonably expected.
– There’s a lot of clever writing, and despite what this reviewer thinks, the plot structure is actually quite sound, as the tools for Finney’s salvation are laid out in plain view. He just needs help to put the pieces together. It’s a more convincing horror escape room than the actual “Escape Room” horror movies.
– Each of the ghosts has fully-developed character traits, because Derrickson wants the audience to feel their loss as deeply as possible.
– There’s a really smart subversion of supernatural horror tropes, particularly the notion of tying things directly to Judeo-Christian religion.
– Mason Thames and Madeleine McGraw do an incredible job with some really heavy material. They’re fully fleshed out and uniquely relatable protagonists. McGraw especially has some truly kickass moments.
– Ethan Hawke, even with his face obscured in all but two scenes, gives an incredibly effective performance. Even without the masks he’d be genuinely creepy.
-The film wears its references on its sleeve, so it never feels cheep or truly derivative. I’ve seen lines from some reviews (not this one) calling the film a ripoff of “Stranger Things,” but even that show is itself a ripoff/homage (depending on your taste) to Stephen King, so what their point is I can’t tell.It’s not a perfect movie, but honestly, in a year where there have been a lot of “really good” films but few “great” ones, this is in the early pantheon for me. Yes, the trailer makes the trajectory of the film very clear, but I’ll take that over the likes of the last two “Jurassic World” trailers that outright lied about what they were about.
If I may cobble together two lines of Simpsons dialogue:
Everyone’s all Nicolas Cage this and Keanu that, but this Ethan Hawke comeback happened so gradually I didn’t even notice.
The AV Club noticed:https://www.avclub.com/ethan-hawke-is-our-greatest-genre-star-because-he-commi-1798243758https://www.avclub.com/when-is-ethan-hawke-going-to-get-his-own-john-wick-1827732589I don’t know if it counts as a “comeback” though, since he didn’t really have the lows of a Nic Cage and has instead just kept plugging away fairly steadily.
Plugging away steadily is exactly what Nic Cage has always done, he never stopped doing movies and he has always brought the same energy no matter how putrid the script.
Or how large his tax debt.
Hot take: Cargill has been coasting on good will from his days as an Ain’t It Cool writer for most of his career. He was an iffy pop culture reporter, he’s an iffy screenwriter.
Saw this last year at Beyond Fest and loved it – definitely not perfect, but captures tone, character, and place the same way Sinister did, but with a more careful hand and eye. The reveals are sometimes telegraphed a bit but the filmmakers aren’t afraid to keep looking at something creepy when you really want to look away. C-? More like B+/A-. Go see it!
Is it Mason or Madison?
Definitely Mason and not Madison.
Who wore it better?
Joe Hill > Stephen King
The mask Ethan Hawke wears is so silly looking. Scott Derickson is bad at evil masks
This movie had one of the coolest lines I’ve heard in a while, between Finney and Gwen after the first disappearance that we see.Finney: Do you think they’ll find him?
Gwen: Not the way they want to.Savage. It’s clever, it’s pithy, it’s dark as fuck, and it’s a good bit of foreshadowing for a moment that happens so early in the story. I honestly don’t know what movie you watched, because this is in the 2022 pantheon so far.
I liked it, actually! Wasn’t as visually compelling as Derrickson’s other work, but man, what a fun time at the movies. Helps that the kids were good actors and their characters well-written. Made me want to see them get through this ordeal. I almost wish it had been longer, or we’d gotten more of their home life. I found the first half the most compelling—when they’re just existing in this era’s Denver—but the final act was satisfying. In a horror movie, that’s the sweet spot for me: I care about the characters, and it has a few scares. This had both. So I’d give it higher than a C-. Like, say, a B+, def.
Enjoyed it, thought Hawke and both main kids were great. Jeremy Davies way overacted his role but that’s sorta his thing now so whatever lolTwo things:-“The Grabber” is an insane name for a serial killer, I kept thinking of Gob’s “Bananagrabber” character from Arrested Development, we laughed about it the whole time-The police sure went from “stop talking about your dreams!” to “the girl had a dream, get 15 squad cars there stat” very quickly.Fun movie though, thought the use of puzzle-y clues for the various items he used to escape was pretty clever
I feel like Gilchrist hastily watched this movie while scrolling through Facebook, having already determined this review was going to be one long “wrong number” pun. I’ll admit that the film is a slow adaptation of its subject matter. It’s clearly based on a short story with very few ingredients added to pad its feature length run time. It could have been a standout episode of The Twilight Zone were it not such a serious allegory. The Grabber’s motivations are crystal clear: he wants his captives to be naughty. He wants to discipline them. From the first scene to the last, this is a heavy handed story about child abuse, something not called out in Gilchrist’s review, or somehow, something Gilchrist never noticed. Again, it sounds like he was distracted. Finn is the subject of abuse. The Grabber and Finn’s father are products of it, and Finn’s potential future. When Robin tells him he’ll have to one day stand up for himself, we know exactly where this is going. Robin wasn’t talking about the bullies at school. Finn has two paths in front of him: follow in his father’s footsteps and become an abuser, or worse. Or stand up to his aggressors and defend himself. The story is very simplistically structured: a step-by-step puzzle neatly bookended by the abuse and the abuse’s end that this movie is about. Simplicity doesn’t make it bad. What’s simplistically bad is referring to this film as a coming of age story. That implies this is something all men must metaphorically go through. But Finn’s story, while all too common, isn’t universal; a subject of child abuse that makes him a target for bullies or, in the case of Gwen pummeling a kid with a rock and cheerleading Robin’s excessive fights, a reactive bully himself. When Finn comments on Robin’s disproportionately violent fight, we’re shown why – later on – Finn’s restrained response to his captivity would be what provides him the patience to deduce his escape; something the jock, the bully, and the alpha male could not. Abandoned elements like the broken window are deliberate. Finn’s putting together a puzzle based on clues provided by the phantom phone, which symbolizes growth forced from the realization he’s been thrown into an inescapable situation, not unlike his home life. The window was the obvious way out. Up and bright, it’s the first exit point one would try after the door. The next step is down through the floor, the next the walls. These are all the two dimensional efforts of a mouse trapped in a cage. Finn proves himself more competent than The Grabber’s other victims by slowly putting the pieces together to solve the puzzle. While it is slow and simple and might not appeal to those who’d compare it to Friday the 13th, I found its puzzling riddle engaging. The physical space itself, though sparse and confined, was itself more interesting than it would look to someone periodically gazing up from an iPhone. The phone, the mattress, the rolled up carpets, the bottle, as well as hidden elements like the wire and the hole under the tiles, were the sort of things you’d find in a challenging escape room. I’m reluctant to call a blatant allegory for child abuse “fun,” but watching Finn piece together his escape was thoroughly entertaining. His sister and The Grabber’s brother also provided a fair amount of comic relief, something often lacking in allegorical horror movies. It’s no coincidence that the siblings of the antagonist and the protagonist were the two who discovered The Grabber’s location. Gwen discovered the location through her apparent psychic abilities, Max through drug induced obsession; Gwen’s an allegory for coping with abuse, Max’s the product of it. In the end, Derrickson doesn’t mince words, and it’s a satisfying payoff. I expected Finn to leave The Grabber behind in his escape, either to placate audiences that have grown uncomfortable with vengeance, especially vengeance that glorifies violence in young men. Or, more cynically, to leave the basement door open for a sequel. But it wouldn’t have worked if Finn had left The Grabber behind. He wasn’t killing his captor, he was killing his abuse. As Finn’s father, Davies isn’t given a lot of material to work with, but he proves that less is more. Outside the confines of Finn’s puzzle, developing Terrance’s character would have been tonally distracting. He didn’t need to be developed because The Grabber is already his metaphor. We don’t need to specifically know why Terrance is abusive anymore than we need to know why The Grabber grabs and torments children, because both represent all child abuse. When Terrance breaks down in the end, he cowers in front of his son. Finn won. He’s stopped his family’s cycle of abuse.
Though The Black Phone is layered in allegories, it’s not a complicated story and has a very obvious message. But the words “child abuse” aren’t mentioned once in Gilchrist’s review. This film might not be something that appeals to hardcore horror fans, but I find it odd that something so simple, mainly its very heavy handed allegory about child abuse, flew right over an AV Club reviewer’s head. Here’s a tip, Gilchrist: puns are always fun in movie reviews, but they should always be incidental. When you establish one, like The Black Phone dials a wrong number, before you’ve ever even seen the film, you’ve only got a 50/50 shot it’ll land. The Black Phone doesn’t have a lot to say, but what it says is strong. The Grabber’s mask won’t become an icon like Ghostface, and it shouldn’t. This wasn’t just some slasher flick looking for a franchise. It’s more than that. In its simplicity, it has depth.
This is a really smart, well-written analysis, one that took my initial feelings after watching it as something slightly closer to what the initial reviewer felt, to really getting something out of it I didn’t get at first. I was hung up on the scene where he tries to get out through the freezer, now I get it. He was a runner in the beginning, he tries to be a runner to get out of his situation, but he says no more running by the end. He needed to not just escape, but to put a definitive end to his torment. When the Grabber falls in the hole, is it the window grate he steps in and breaks his ankle on? Just one more piece of that puzzle he put together.
Thanks! My initial feelings were similar too, but the more I thought about it, and as I wrote my comment, the more I recognized the story’s very tight and organized structure, and just how solid and how prolific the allegories actually were. Every moment in this film had a meaning. Nothing was wasted on superfluous character development or shock value. I hadn’t even thought about the runner analogy, but it’s one more piece that shows just how deliberate every moment in this film was. And you’re absolutely right about the window grate; the grate was in the hole and it’s what The Grabber broke his ankle on. As for the freezer, he had to break into it to get the raw steak that he uses to distract the attack dog after killing The Grabber. On another note I didn’t mention (because my comment got so long, thanks for reading it all, BTW!) was Mason Thames’ standout performance as Finn. It bugged me that Gilchrist didn’t recognize this, stating, “…the problem might be that young Mason Thames just doesn’t seem consistently frightened enough.”Even before I began to recognize the intricacies of the story itself, I thought Thames’ portrayal as someone truly trapped was far more genuine than what we usually see in horror movies. He could have shrieked or cried out for help more than he did, but who would that be for? He was alone, and he made it clear he knew this. It’s far easier for an actor to scream like Drew Barrymore over some Jiffy Pop (not to knock Barrymore; I love Scream, but it’s a different film with a different purpose) than harness the silent fear of someone actually in Finn’s predicament.Like Davies’ role as Finn’s father, Thames proves that less is more. Thames might not appear frightened enough to someone only casually watching this movie, but if you pay attention you can see the fear in his subtle movements and facial expressions. In a movie this deliberate, this is how Thames had to play this role. He wasn’t only scared. As soon as he realized he was trapped, he also had to begin strategizing his escape, all part of the growth that would lead to him ending his family’s cycle of abuse. He couldn’t do that playing a frightened stock character, and shouldn’t have. It would demean what this film is actually about. His fear had to be dynamic, and Thames stuck the landing.It’s ironic Gilchrist didn’t catch this because it’s the sort of thing movie critics often applaud and demand more of.