You’re locked in a basement. The only way humans get out is a creaky, well-monitored door. The walls are tall and gray. The entire contents of the room are a bare mattress on the floor and The Black Phone on the wall. The phone isn’t connected to a power source or a network. And yet it rings periodically all the same. On the other end of the line? Dead people. Dead people who until very recently lived in that same basement cell.
This is the premise of The Black Phone, a fairly original and unique abduction thriller. It is almost entirely unique on the count that while being a horror, the supernatural elements are all forces of good, like the cosmos is trying right a human wrong. Boy, I wish the cosmos would do more of that, huh? Sometimes I feel like human life consists entirely of human wrongs. BTW, how do you think ghosts share the dead phone anyway? Moaning contests? Rock, paper, tombstones? Maybe they’re just trying to honor the spirit of the thing.
Finney (Mason Thames) is just a kid. As if like didn’t suck enough already, he seems to be approaching junior high. Suck is the operative word here. Finn owns a trio of bullies, an alcoholic and physically abusive father (Jeremy Davies), and some jerk in half a Halloween mask (Ethan Hawke) is grabbing kids off the streets. The kids are never seen nor heard from again. At least Finney lives in an ideal time and place, right? No. Denver, 1978. Hmmm, the Broncos were OK, I guess.
The one true asset Finney seems to have is a supportive and slightly psychic younger sister, Gwen (Madeline McGraw). The two have an “us against the world” bond, which is special, and gets more so when Finney becomes the latest child abducted by The Grabber. Really? “The Grabber?” Sounds like an arcade game, not a serial murderer, huh?
The Grabber seems to target alphas, so why he collects Finney is anybody’s guess. Maybe the kid is more of an alpha when he’s alone. Dunno. Maybe The Grabber just sees something in Finney. The irony is pre-abduction Finney comes off as a victim. He’s the kid who surrenders a home run ball to an alpha male, gets beat 
up by a posse, avoids getting beat up another time by taking refuge behind another alpha male, watches helplessly when dad beats the tar out of Gwen. It isn’t until Finney is locked in a basement that he finds his own strength – strength aided by spooky collect calls from the other side.
The best part of this picture is seeing how Finney reacts to his dilemma. I expected The Black Phone to be scary – and it was, but not in the way I thought it would be. As stated above, the supernatural acts as a boon rather than a menace which means we the audience welcomes the otherwise scary spirit world. This –as also stated above- is a relatively rare take on horror. The Black Phone reminded me of both the original Halloween and Don’t Breathe, which puts it in pretty good company. The film will also provide wistful reminiscence for those who grew up with dial phones like myself. Wait, is that the horror part? A dial phone? Yeah, I could see that. And I wonder how long it took and adult to teach the child actors how to use a dial phone. The Black Phone isn’t a barn burner … but it is a decent thriller and, in its own way, a classic horror film. I definitely recommend this movie to people who see horror in everyday life.
The Grabber erases humans before they’ve grown
Locking them in a basement of his own
What’s the greater horror?
Abduction/kill some more or
Having to resort to a 70s dial-up phone?
Rated R, 103 Minutes
Director: Scott Derrickson
Writer: Scott Derrickson, C. Robert Cargill
Genre: Escape room
Type of being most likely to enjoy this film: Planners
Type of being least likely to enjoy this film: Mothers
