REVIEW:
The Black Phone isn’t so much a horror movie as it is a thriller. And it’s a fine one at that. This is the movie about a boy named Finn, who lives in a small town where there is a kidnapper driving around, grabbing boys, pulling them into his black van, and then locking them in his basement. The movie wisely spends the first fourth or so just showing Finn in his life, being bullied at school, being treated awful by his father, and talking about “the Grabber,” as the kidnapper has been nicknamed. And then it happens to Finn too. We spend most of the rest of the movie in the basement with him, as he gets calls on a black phone, which is supposedly unplugged and not working. The calls come from the ghosts of all of the other kids who were kidnapped and killed in this very same basement. They want to help Finn escape and defeat the Grabber. It’s a pretty basic premise, but in the hands of director Scott Derickson, this one is very well-done. There are clever touches here, like how we see the kids standing next to Finn, when they are on the phone with him, and how the voice coming out of their mouths has the distorted, static sound of a voice over the phone. There isn’t anything especially brilliant here, but sometimes it’s about keeping it simple. Take Alfred Hitchcock’s Rear Window, for example, which never left the apartment view of Jimmy Stewart. The Black Phone isn’t quite that simple, but it’s plot doesn’t reach for anything too crazy either. The acting here is pretty strong, and the story is compelling. It’s also kind of cool how little we learn about the Grabber, making him and his motivations all the more scary.