‘The Black Phone’ is suitably scary and wonderfully acted
Doctor Strange and Sinister alum Scott Derrickson gives us a scary Ethan Hawke and a suitably off-putting film to match
Given there may not be an original bone in its body, it’s quite impressive how engaging The Black Phone is. It’s a horror story set in the late 70s about child abduction, lightly seasoned with supernatural elements that allow director Scott Derrickson to occasionally go for a cheesy jumpscare in the midst of its intense narrative.
Yet despite its derivativity, the film is anchored by a keen sense of editing and audio-visual design that creates an oppressively unpleasant tone, furthered by a handful of nice performances from veteran Ethan Hawke and newcomers Mason Thame and Madeleine McGraw. As such, The Black Phone feels a bit different from other recent horror films. It’s not quite as cheeky with its material as this year’s X or as deliberately traumatizing as 2019's Midsommar, but Derrickson manages to achieve a consistent feeling of dread that makes his latest work quite enjoyable.
It’s 1978, and in the midst of schoolyard fistfights and baseball games, children are disappearing. Finney (Thame) becomes one such child after other kids he knows disappears, finding himself in a sound-proofed basement being held by a man known only as The Grabber (Hawke). However, he’s not alone — the voices of previous children killed by The Grabber communicate with him through a disconnected rotary phone that only rings at night.
Simply stating the premise hardly does the presentation any justice. Rather than cast Finney into danger right away, The Black Phone does important work in establishing his character and the tone of the world that he’s in. He lives with his sister Gwen and a widowed, abusive father. He’s bullied at school, he has few friends. Importantly, Finney is a character with which the audience can sympathize with. Mason Thame gives the character remarkable depth through his performance, a surprisingly good turn for the young actor that shows a lot of promise for his future work. Madeleine McGraw does similarly well as Gwen, providing a variety of emotions and one exceptionally well-placed joke midway through the film.
Meanwhile, Ethan Hawke continues villainous 2022 streak as The Black Phone’s antagonist, The Grabber. This is a performance where we scarcely see Hawke’s face, yet its testament to his genuine ability as an actor that his body language and vocal control creates a macabre visage of the man beneath the mask. Anytime he’s on screen, it’s hard not to feel a slight tightening in your chest, an anxiety about what this mysterious man might do. On top of stellar costume design for his character, Hawke’s performance exudes a sinister aura that finely threads the film with a constant level of unease. In an interview, Hawke mentioned an excerpt from Scorsese’s Bob Dylan documentary where Dylan said “if somebody’s got a mask on, you know they’re telling the truth — and if they don’t have a mask on, you know they’re lying.” Hawke found the scariest element of The Grabber to be that he didn’t want you to see him, and yet he still effortlessly communicates so much character even when his eyes are usually the only part of his face visible.
Sadly, the depth of Hawke’s performance is mismatched with the shallowness of The Grabber’s character. I’m not saying I want to sympathize with the child abductor/killer — in fact, far from it! However, there’s seemingly no real reason for his actions besides being an embodiment of evil. I mean, he’s only called The Grabber; the book is pretty much open and shut on him from the get-go. Any glance into the man himself is sub-textual, usually dug up by Hawke’s mannerisms or actions. Given the conceptual terror present within The Grabber, I think it would’ve made sense for him to have some sort of personal philosophy on his awful actions to at least make him seem more like a character, and less like a force of nature.
I feel The Black Phone also undermines the genuinely dreadful tone it so meticulously builds with some rather silly jumpscares that are pretty easy to predict. Derrickson is certainly not averse to the jumpscare — 2012’s Sinister, also starring Hawke, seems to prefer them to building on its genuinely creepy premise. Thankfully there are only about 4 or 5 in this film, but I’d be lying if I said I didn’t roll my eyes every time one happened. It’s extra frustrating given that they are one of the laziest facets of horror filmmaking (in my opinion, of course!) and given the genuine quality afforded to the rest of the film, it makes them stick out all the more.
However, the relatively low number of jumpscares does allow for the fimmaking to speak for itself most of the time. The editing and cinematography provide a solid flow of information to the audience, and even if neither are exactly reinventing the genre they do fine work in servicing the narrative of the film. The overall aesthetic is suitably bleak, matched by an appropriately picked soundtrack that exacerbates the pulsing tension nicely. Derrickson seems to have mostly approached this film with a more subtle approach to horror in mind, and it usually pays off when he puts character over horror.
I won’t call The Black Phone a ‘breath of fresh air’ for the weary horror cinema crowd. I’m hardly a scholar on the genre, and I can certainly identify many a number of things that I’ve seen before in this film. Yet Derrickson’s film is aggressively competent and demonstrates an understanding of what makes horror such an intoxicating genre. Through a set of great performances and interesting direction and cinematography, The Black Phone confirms that the most horrifying things might be just outside our field of view, and provides those scares accordingly.
7/10
