THE BLACK PHONE

The Black Phone is the film that Scott Derrickson made instead of his second Doctor Strange movie. Originally written for another director, Derrickson took over the role when he and Marvel went in different directions, and perhaps gives a hint as to why his vision was not quite right for Disney.

The Black Phone is dark. Thematically and in it’s visuals, and while it wasn’t as scary as I expected it to be it did offer a few decent jumps, and built tension cleverly and effectively, in a way that would perhaps have been too much for the MCU audience.

The film centres around Finney Shaw - played by Mason Thames - and a series of child kidnappings that have occurred in the local neighbourhood, perpetrated by someone known only as The Grabber. This is, as I understand it, Thames’ big screen debut, and here he marks himself out as a future star. He plays the part with a confidence that belies his lack of experience, and has great chemistry with Madeleine McGraw, who plays his sister Gwen. This relationship between the siblings gives the film a heart which manages to elevate it above other horror / thrillers of this ilk. While Finney is being held captive in the more traditional sense, there is a feeling that, without him, so too, in a way, is Gwen. Trapped at home with an abusive father and increasingly desperate to find, and bring home, her rock.

McGraw herself gives perhaps the most mature performance of the film, despite her young age. She is believable as a child who, as a victim of circumstance, has had to grow old beyond her years. A stark contrast to The Grabber who seems to have never fully grown up

The Grabbers get-up, and black balloons, is genuinely creepy and the way Hawke can go from childlike to beastlike is sure to make him one of the years most iconic screen villains and will no doubt inspire Halloween costumes up and down the country this year. Hawke manages to make The Grabber grounded, where it would have been so easy to slip into cartoon-ish melodrama. The character himself may be menacingly crazy, but it is the restraint in Hawke’s performance that truly makes the it work.

Where the film doesn’t quite work is in the relationship between the Shaw children and their father. Other than one genuinely upsetting scene early on in the movie, in which Madeleine McGraws performance is jaw dropping, these sequences fall flat, and feel like they’re only there as a half-arsed attempt at providing some back story to the films more mystical elements. In a film which otherwise drip feeds information to the audience, allowing them to form their own conclusions without ever explicitly revealing anything, this felt out of place, and perhaps something which didn’t exist in the original script.

Narratively The Black Phone offers few surprises, but it is tense enough, with a few jump scares thrown in, to make it worth your time. While the child actors here are excellent, it is Ethan Hawke’s name which will draw in the audiences, and his performance which will keep them glued to the screen.