THE BLACK PHONE (2021)

Studio:     Universal Pictures/Blumhouse
Director:    Scott Derrickson
Writer:     Scott Derrickson, C. Robert Cargill
Producer:  Jason Blum, Scott Derrickson, C. Robert Cargill
Stars:     Mason Thames, Madeleine McGraw, Jeremy Davies, James Ransone, E. Roger Mitchell, Troy Rudeseal, Miguel Cazarez Mora, Ethan Hawke

Review Score:

---

Summary:

An abducted boy receives clues on how to escape his captor from the dead voices of previous victims who speak through a mysterious phone.

---

Synopsis:     Show/Hide Spoilers

In North Denver in 1978, a serial killer known as “The Grabber” kidnaps Bruce Yamada as his latest child victim.

Finney Blake and his younger sister Gwen see Finney’s friend Robin Arelland viciously beat up a bully named Moose on their walk to school. Later, Robin stops three other bullies from assaulting Finney in a bathroom. Robin advises Finney that he will eventually have to stick up for himself.

Detectives Wright and Miller interview Gwen because she told Bruce’s sister Amy that she dreamt Bruce was abducted by a man with black balloons in a black van. Confused that Gwen knows these details despite them not being released to the public, Gwen explains that sometimes her dreams turn out to be predictive premonitions. Finney and Gwen’s alcoholic, abusive father Terrence subsequently whips Gwen for attracting attention from the police by carrying on her dead mother’s insistence that she could psychically project things that were not real. Meanwhile, The Grabber kidnaps Robin.

The three bullies beat up Finney. Gwen comes to her brother’s rescue by clubbing one of the bullies with a rock, but she gets beat up too. Finney then partners with his crush Donna in Biology, and she expresses sympathy for his beating. After school, The Grabber poses as a magician to abduct Finney.

Finney ends up imprisoned in a soundproofed cellar room with a disconnected rotary phone on the wall, which The Grabber claims doesn’t work. While wearing various forms of a menacing mask, The Grabber cryptically provokes Finney with regular visits.

Gwen prays to Jesus to give her the dreams she needs to find her missing brother. The phone rings in the cellar room. The dead voice on the other end of the line turns out to be Bruce, who tells Finney that he is the only one of The Grabber’s victims who could hear the phone ringing. Bruce also reveals that The Grabber can hear the phone, but he refuses to admit it. Bruce then tells Finney about loose floor tiles where Finney digs a deep hole in the dirt underneath that he covers with carpeting.

After bringing food to Finney, The Grabber leaves the cellar door unlocked. Billy, another Grabber victim who used to be a paperboy, calls Finney on the phone with a warning that The Grabber left the door ajar because he wants Finney to go upstairs so he can beat him with a belt for trying to leave without permission. Finney sneaks upstairs and spies The Grabber waiting for him just like Billy said.

Billy calls a second time. Billy tells Finney about a torn cable he hid while he was captive. Billy uses an empty bottle to paranormally point toward a high window where Finney might be able to escape. Finney tries using the cable to climb up the wall, but ends up only tearing down the window’s grate.

Despite the threat of more physical punishment, Gwen tells her father that her dreams have been giving her clues about Finney’s whereabouts as well as previous abductions. Terrence again warns that the visions aren’t real, and claims they drove Gwen’s mother to do terrible things including killing herself. However, Terrence ultimately relents and drives around the neighborhood with Gwen looking to corroborate her clues.

Detectives Wright and Miller unknowingly end up at The Grabber’s house where Finney is imprisoned while canvassing the neighborhood. The Grabber’s brother Max, who is an armchair investigator obsessed with solving the case, answers the door. Due to his dimwittedness and drug addiction, Max remains unaware that his brother is a killer keeping kids locked up in their basement. The detectives write off Max as a crackpot.

Griffin, another Grabber victim, appears to Finney as a bloody vision before calling him on the phone. Griffin warns that Finney is running out of time because The Grabber’s brother is close to finally figuring out the truth. Finney asks why he hasn’t been killed yet. Griffin explains that before moving on to the next stage, The Grabber first wants to defeat Finney in a game of “Naughty Boy,” which Finney has so far avoided playing.

Griffin tells Finney that The Grabber is currently passed out in a chair while waiting for Finney to finally come upstairs. Griffin shows Finney the combination to a bike lock that The Grabber stole from him. Finney sneaks upstairs, unlocks the padlocked front door, and briefly escapes outside, but The Grabber quickly recaptures him.

Vance, a violent teenage bully who also became a Grabber victim, calls Finney with a warning that “today is the day” when The Grabber plans to finally kill Finney. Vance tells Finney about a hidden vent. Finney discovers that the vent leads into a storage freezer, but Finney collapses in despair when he realizes he cannot open the freezer door from inside.

Robin calls Finney with motivational encouragement. Robin also instructs Finney on how to use the phone receiver as a weapon against The Grabber.

Gwen sees an address in a dream. She then bikes around the neighborhood until a vision of the five Grabber victims stops her in front of a house with those numbers. Gwen calls Detective Wright, who mobilizes cops to raid the location.

Max finally pieces together that his brother is The Grabber. Max discovers Finney being held captive in the basement, but The Grabber then kills Max from behind with an ax to the head.

The Grabber attacks Finney. Finney lures The Grabber into the hole he previously dug. The Grabber falls and breaks his ankle on the window grate placed at the bottom. Finney begins beating The Grabber with the phone receiver. The Grabber flips out when Finney removes his mask, and Finney uses the distraction to start strangling The Grabber with the phone cord.

The phone bon the wall rings. Finney puts the receiver to The Grabber’s ear. The five victims taunt The Grabber before Finney finally snaps his neck.

The cops discover that The Grabber buried his victims in the basement of the house that Gwen led them to, but it is actually across the street from a second house where The Grabber held his victims captive. Finney emerges from the second house and reunites with his sister across the street. Cops converge on the second house. The siblings later reunite with Terrence.

Finney eventually returns to school where classmates continually whisper about him. Finney confidently retakes his seat next to Donna and smilingly tells her she can call him “Finn.”

---

Review:

“The Black Phone’s” prologue establishes an entirely immersive setting without ever saying a single meaningful word.  From the pitcher’s mound, Finney stares down the batter, Bruce, in an intense yet friendly Little League rivalry.  Parents cheer while children jeer.  In between pitches, Finney concernedly glances at a group of giggling girls behind a chain-link fence, checking to see if he’s attracting the eyes of a crush only casually paying attention.  Bruce takes advantage of Finney’s distraction by taking him deep, resulting in celebratory elation for one side, and defeated disappointment for the other.  An angry coach who takes kids sports too seriously spikes his clipboard in frustration.  It’s a scene straight out of any Saturday afternoon in any average neighborhood, and “The Black Phone” uses it effectively to instantly teleport us to its distinct slice of 1970s suburbia.

With that foundation freshly formed, the movie immediately takes a jackhammer to the mellowed mood when a black van arrives for Bruce and all colors fade to grey.  “The Black Phone” cuts to a credit montage whose cinematic sense of how to be suggestively sinister seems stripped straight out of a Zodiac Killer true crime series.  Bloody kids apply bandages.  Vacant playground swings sway ominously.  Empty tennis shoes lie abandoned in grassy fields.  Missing person posters plaster poles.  Balloons float away into the sky.  With the added context of a film grain filter scratching each image while a shrieking soundtrack wails underneath, this clip collection delivers a complete background story about serial kidnappings with appropriately unnerving atmosphere to boot.

Beyond just his bloodline, author Joe Hill has repeatedly proven himself to be the heir to Stephen King’s patented brand of frightful fiction.  Based on Hill’s short story, “The Black Phone” features several prototypical pieces his father turned into personal hallmarks, which are apparently engrained in their family’s creative DNA.  That scent starts with a nose for period nostalgia on par with the strength of their scares.

Finney has sad eyes and scruffy hair, the kind of likable loner who finds fun in launching model rockets when he isn’t busy being bullied in the school bathroom.  He also excitedly talks about TV with his kid sister Gwen, with whom he shares a strong sibling bond.  Gwen comes equipped with a funny foul mouth to make her cutely endearing.  She also has the courageous conviction of a young Princess Leia, except when it comes to their stern father Terrence.  An alcoholic eager to whip out abuse with his belt, Terrence gets an extra boost to his blue-collar boorishness from being played by Jeremy Davies, who owns his own corner when it comes to portraying trailer trash chodes.

Kids riding bikes.  Convenience store pinball games.  Idyllic, innocent scenery disrupted by violence that comes from both self-absorbed peers and parents as well as a supernatural entity or a serial killer.  These are common King/Hill traits that work well because they ground fictional fantasies in relatable realities while being comforting chestnuts of familiarity to seasoned readers/viewers too.

Another ingredient from that reliable recipe is a hint of unexplained psychic phenomena.  In this case, Gwen occasionally has dreams that turn out to be predictive premonitions.  When a mysterious masked magician known as “The Grabber” makes Finney his latest kidnapped captive, Gwen’s visions, which she believes come from Jesus, whom she pleadingly prays to out of desperation, may be crucial to discovering Finney’s whereabouts.  More crucial, and just as spooky, is a disconnected black phone on the wall in Finney’s cement-walled cellar prison.  Through it, voices of victims previously murdered by The Grabber provide cryptic clues that Finney might be able to use to escape.

In typical fashion for this territory, Hill knows full well what he’s doing by keeping complete explanations for these supernatural occurrences up to a viewer’s imagination.  Maybe it’s God.  Maybe it’s something else.  Whatever it is, the blanks have just enough space for your mind to add in its own speculation so that element of the unknown makes the suspense that much stranger.

Keeping “The Black Phone” from contemporary cult classic status are a couple of hiccups that combine for a light cough the rhythm never fully remedies.  Extraneous minutes in the runtime come from a few dead-end dreams out of Gwen, repeated phone rings with no one on the other side, and pat plot beats like an escape that occurs too early, assuring freedom will be short-lived and recapture imminent.  Also, I appreciate an appearance from James Ransone as a dim-bulb screw-up as much as anyone, but his sub-thread as the villain’s oblivious brother offers no value except as an adult body to drop since the movie’s premise limits what it can acceptably depict with children.

Back to the boons though, “The Black Phone” has creepiness where it counts and makes sure that macabre mood always matters most.  Ethan Hawke embraces wicked weirdo mode full-on as The Grabber, sporting an instantly iconic Tom Savini-designed mask certain to become a Halloween staple.  Amidst its terror, “The Black Phone” turns in contemplative thoughts on a poignant theme of invisible kids whose names aren’t known until they go missing, and how they come together, even in death, to collectively defeat evil.  Thanks to the supernatural element, the story gets the right pinch of distance from “too close to home” horror to take the edge off so the child abduction angle stays unsettling without getting uncomfortably perverted.  Maintaining that grimness while still being eerily entertaining is a balancing act only the most adept acrobats can accomplish.  Thankfully, Joe Hill, director Scott Derrickson, and co-scripter C. Robert Cargill know their way around horror’s Big Top, and few creators can put together a more chilling circus than this one.

Review Score: 85

---