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‘The Black Phone’ Review: The Dead Have Your Number

Ethan Hawke plays the big bad in this 1970s-set child-abduction thriller.

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By Jeannette Catsoulis

More touching than terrifying, Scott Derrickson’s “Black Phone” is less a horror movie than a coming-of-age ghost story. In place of gouting gore and surging fright, this enjoyable adaptation of Joe Hill’s 2005 short story has an almost contemplative tone, one that drains its familiar horror tropes — a masked psychopath, communications from beyond the grave — of much of their chill.

The movie’s low goose bump count, though, is far from ruinous. Set in small-town Colorado in the 1970s, the story centers on 13-year-old Finney (Mason Thames), an ace baseball pitcher burdened by a dead mother, school bullies and an abusive, alcoholic father (Jeremy Davies). An early lecture from a new friend (a charismatic Miguel Cazarez Mora) about fighting back will prove prescient when Finney becomes the latest victim of The Grabber (Ethan Hawke), a clownish magician and the abductor of several neighborhood boys.

While light on scares and short on specifics (The Grabber is a generic, somewhat comic villain with an unexplored psychopathology), “The Black Phone” is more successful as a celebration of youthful resilience. As Finney languishes in a soundproofed cement dungeon, his spunky little sister, Gwen (Madeleine McGraw, a standout), is using the psychic gifts she inherited from her mother to find him. Finney also has help from the killer’s previous victims, who call him on the ancient rotary phone on the wall above his bed, undeterred by the fact that it has long been disconnected.

Revisiting elements of his own childhood and adolescence, Derrickson (who wrote the screenplay with C. Robert Cargill) evokes a time when Ted Bundy was on the news and “The Texas Chain Saw Massacre” was at the drive-in. The movie’s images have a mellow, antique glaze that strengthens the nostalgic mood while softening the dread. (Compare, for instance, Finney’s kidnapping with Georgie’s abduction in the 2017 chiller “It” : both feature balloons and a masked monster, but only one is terrifying.) It doesn’t help that Hawke is stranded in a character whose torture repertoire consists mainly of elaborate hand gestures.

Leaning heavily into the familiar narrative obsessions of Hill’s father, Stephen King — plucky kids, feckless parents, creepy clowns and their accessories — “The Black Phone” feels unavoidably derivative. But the young actors are appealing, the setting is fondly imagined and the anxieties of adolescence are front and center. For most of us, those worries were more than enough to conjure the shivers.

The Black Phone Rated R for bloody apparitions and blasphemous words. Running time: 1 hour 42 minutes. In theaters.

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‘the black phone’: film review | fantastic fest 2021.

Scott Derrickson’s adaptation of a Joe Hill story stars Mason Thames as a boy who receives supernatural help in his attempts to escape a serial killer played by Ethan Hawke.

By John DeFore

John DeFore

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The second feature film (after several TV projects) based on the work of horror author Joe Hill, Scott Derrickson ’s The Black Phone expands on a short story in ways that feel very true to the source material while significantly enhancing its theatrical appeal. It was never in doubt that this would be a more commercial outing than the deeply odd (but effective, in its way) 2013 adaptation Horns , but the picture also dovetails nicely with the current vogue for retro-set genre fare, lightly scratching a nostalgic itch without seeming at all like it’s trying to ride Stranger Things ’ coattails. (Or those of Hill’s father and Stranger inspiration, Stephen King, though this story could easily be one of his.)

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On a Denver baseball field in 1978 we meet Finney (Mason Thames), a pitcher whose prowess on the diamond (his “arm is mint,” an opponent declares) doesn’t prevent him from being bullied between classes. He’s a jock who walks through life like a dweeb, and even kid sister Gwen (Madeleine McGraw) sometimes has to come to his rescue. His timidity surely comes from living with a sad-angry, alcoholic father (Jeremy Davies) who can barely cope with raising two kids on his own — much less in a community whose boys are disappearing, victims of a killer locals call the Grabber.

The Black Phone

Venue: Fantastic Fest

Release date: Friday, Jan. 28

Cast: Mason Thames, Madeleine McGraw, Ethan Hawke, Jeremy Davies, James Ransone

Director: Scott Derrickson

Screenwriters: Scott Derrickson, C. Robert Cargill

Like the boogeyman in King’s It , the Grabber approaches his prey in the garb of a clown. But this is a vastly more straightforward thriller, whose menace has nothing to do with the supernatural. Ethan Hawke ’s nameless character, whose motives we’ll never dig into, is simply a man who kidnaps teenage boys while posing as a party entertainer, keeps them locked up for a while, and presumably murders them.

Here, the spirit world is in contact only with the good guys, even if its attempts to help often scare them. Like her absent mother before her, Gwen is troubled by prophetic dreams. Her visions predicted the most recent kidnapping, with a specificity that brought her to the attention of local detectives. (Interacting with them and other authority figures, McGraw steals scenes with foul-mouthed impatience.) But she has no advance warning that Finney will be next.

Derrickson and writing partner C. Robert Cargill set us up to wonder if what’s in store between Finney and the Grabber will be a two-handed psychodrama. Once he has kidnapped Finney and locked him in his large, nearly empty basement, the Grabber is nearly gentle to the boy. “I’m not going to hurt you,” he promises, tacitly suggesting that Finney isn’t like the boys who preceded him. But do those promises come from the man Hawke is playing, or from only one facet of him? The lower half of the Grabber’s mask can be switched out to depict different expressions, from no mouth at all to a Joker-like, menacing grin; each may represent a psychological state distinct from the others, as in M. Night Shyamalan’s abduction thriller Split .

But while the interactions between the two, and Finney’s attempts to find a way out, work well enough to sustain purely reality-based suspense, that’s not all we get. An old rotary phone hangs on the basement wall, and it rings an awful lot for one whose cord hangs severed beneath it. Finney starts getting calls from the spirits of the basement’s previous residents, each of whom has his own piece of advice for the kid. Clearly, none of them escaped, so Finn will have to add his own abilities to their know-how — and maybe benefit from Gwen’s as well — if he hopes to get out.

Even when projecting utter desperation, Thames is spirited enough to keep the film from becoming utterly bleak, and the action aboveground offers some lighthearted moments of hope — from Gwen’s increasingly grouchy interaction with a God who won’t deliver visions on demand, to the involvement in the case of Max (James Ransone), a coked-up wild card whose efforts as a civilian detective may be more valuable than the cops think.

A couple of effective jump-scares aside, the film runs on ticking-clock suspense, knowing that whatever the Grabber says, it’s unlikely Finn will stay in his good graces for very long. The story’s final third works even better than the buildup would suggest, shrugging off some of the atmospherics and, with a clever nod to a classic in the serial-killer genre, focusing all the movie’s energies on a sequence that delivers. Happy or sad, this episode will certainly be immortalized in neighborhood lore, the kind of half-factual legend repeated from one school year to the next, until something more exciting happens.

Full credits

Venue: Fantastic Fest Distributor: Universal Pictures Production company: Crooked Highway Cast: Mason Thames, Madeleine McGraw, Ethan Hawke, Jeremy Davies, James Ransone Director: Scott Derrickson Screenwriters: Scott Derrickson, C. Robert Cargill Producers: Jason Blum, C. Robert Cargill, Scott Derrickson Executive producers: Joe Hill, Ryan Turek, Christopher H. Warner Director of photography: Brett Jutkiewicz Production designer: Patti Podesta Costume designer: Amy Andrews Editor: Frédéric Thoraval Casting directors: Sarah Domeier Lindo, Terri Taylor

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The Black Phone Reviews

Based on Joe Hill’s book of the same name, the creators provide one of the most memorable contemporary horrors, discussing loss, domestic violence, supernatural, and much more.

Full Review | Original Score: A | Apr 10, 2024

It's not groundbreaking, but it's very well done.

Full Review | Jan 18, 2024

Here’s one of those supernatural thrillers that would actually be better off without the supernatural elements.

Full Review | Original Score: 2.5/4 | Oct 14, 2023

Derrickson has succeeded in making a film that is definitely worth any horror fan's time. Is it a new classic? No, but by hell, it is one fun ride.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | Jul 31, 2023

The Black Phone carries a horror premise with a supernatural touch full of potential, but it plays too safe by betting on a narrative that's too simple, predictable, and repetitive.

Full Review | Original Score: C+ | Jul 25, 2023

A New Horror Icon lives

Full Review | Jul 25, 2023

Ethan Hawke attempts to scare in a straightforward serial killer nightmare that is about as satisfying as a one-minute payphone call.

Full Review | Original Score: 2/5 | Jul 21, 2023

Derrickson is comfortable navigating dark and demented worlds, so it's frustrating when "The Black Phone" doesn't come together in a successful way.

Full Review | Original Score: 2/4 | Jul 16, 2023

Derrickson prioritizes jump-scares and sustaining a disquieting mood over the lives of these kids. He loses himself in the technique when the real nightmare is staring him right in the face.

Full Review | May 30, 2023

These additions significantly alter the tone of the original story for better or worse depending on what kind of horror movie you’re looking for.

Full Review | Original Score: B- | Feb 18, 2023

It’s a B-movie abduction flick centered in the 80s that values simplicity over complexity. And ultimately, The Black Phone is a theatrical experience that is sure to get your blood pumping.

Full Review | Original Score: B- | Feb 10, 2023

Scott Derrickson's return to his horror sandbox, The Black Phone, is a fantastic vintage horror film that utilizes sound against its audience.

Full Review | Jan 9, 2023

Ethan Hawke continues his spectacular mid-career run in a rare villainous role.

Full Review | Jan 3, 2023

The Black Phone is easily one of the best horror/trillers this year. The young cast members Mason Thames and Madeleine McGraw light up ever scene they are in & then Ethan Hawke becomes something horrifically unknown and yet interesting. A MUST WATCH FILM!

Full Review | Original Score: 10/10 | Dec 26, 2022

a good ole fashioned scary night out at the movies filled with dead kids, creepy masks, and haunting 8mm film.

Full Review | Original Score: 7/10 | Nov 2, 2022

It is as much ‘coming of age’ as ‘run from the monster’, and that is very much to its credit.

Full Review | Original Score: 8/10 | Oct 17, 2022

The Black Phone is a solid, classical horror flick by a team who love the genre and excel at their craft — what more could you ask for?

Full Review | Sep 29, 2022

In theory, the concept of The Black Phone is unique and interesting.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | Aug 22, 2022

The Black Phone is grounded in realism for a large part of the story & has just a cinch of fictional horror that truly allows the audience to become immersed in the story, which is elevated by good performances & unique creativity within the narrative.

Full Review | Original Score: A- | Aug 21, 2022

The Black Phone delivers one of the best stories and some of the best characters that I have seen all year. Ethan Hawke's performance as The Grabber paired with Derrickson's directing of Cargill's script are a match made in hell.

Full Review | Original Score: 4.25/5 | Aug 19, 2022

‘The Black Phone’ Review: Ethan Hawke in a Serial-Killer Movie with Some Nightmare Images but Less Fear Than Meets the Eye

Scott Derrickson's thriller has the trappings of a grungy dread-soaked nightmare, but it's too driven by fantasy to get under your skin.

By Owen Gleiberman

Owen Gleiberman

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Ethan Hawke , in 30 years, has never played a flat-out villain before, so it would be nice to say that in “ The Black Phone ” he not only plays a serial killer — one of those anonymous madmen who live in a one-story house of dingy brick with a dungeon in the basement — but that he makes something memorable out of it. His mask is certainly disturbing. Hawke’s character, who is known as the Grabber, is a kidnapper of teenage boys, to whom he presumably does unspeakable things. He drives a black ’70s van with the word Abracadabra written on the side of it, and when he pops out of the vehicle to yank his victims off the street, he’ll be wearing a magician’s hat or carrying some black balloons. But it’s not until we see him in his home element that we take in the full hideous grandeur of that mask, which comes in removable sections and looks almost like it’s been chiseled in stone: sometimes it’s got a leering smile, sometimes a frown, and sometimes he just wears the lower half of it.

That this is Hawke playing a figure of evil is one of the principal hooks of “The Black Phone.” Yet serial-killer films, or at least the good ones, tend to have a dark mystery to them. By the time Hawke shows up in “The Black Phone,” in an odd way we feel like we already know him.

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The movie is set in North Denver in 1978, which seems like the perfect setting for a serial-killer movie, especially since it colors in the era with a quota of convincing detail. We meet Finney (Mason Thames), the doleful, long-haired 13-year-old hero, when he’s pitching a Little League game; after he gives up the game-winning home run, we see the teams shuffle past each other, shaking hands and saying “Good game, good game” — a detail owned by “Dazed and Confused,” though at least the reference has its nostalgia in the right place. Finney and his precocious kid sister, Gwen (Madeleine McGraw), discuss who’s the biggest heartthrob on “Happy Days” (she thinks it’s Potsie, but prefers Danny Bonaduce on “The Partridge Family”), and the movie weaves a resonant period vibe out of backyard rocket launchers, “The Texas Chain Saw Massacre,” songs like “Free Ride,” and, tellingly, posters for missing children.

It seems there’s been a recent epidemic of them: five teenagers, all boys, pulled off the streets by the Grabber. And Finney, of course, is next. It’s not long before he’s been kidnapped and stuck in the Grabber’s dungeon — a concrete bunker, soundproof and empty except for a dirty mattress, with corroded walls marked by a rusty horizontal crack that looks like a wound. The heart of the movie is Finney’s experience down there and his attempt to escape. Now and then, the Grabber presents himself to the kid, hinting at terrible things to come, and giving him food, like scrambled eggs that look scarier than anything else in the movie (though they prove quite edible).

Yet despite the hellhole trappings, “The Black Phone,” as we quickly discover, is not a dread-soaked, grungy, realistic serial-killer movie, like “The Silence of the Lambs” or “Dahmer.” It’s more like “Room” driven by a top-heavy dose of fanciful horror, with touches of “It” and “Stranger Things.” We get a hint of where the movie is going early on, when Gwen has a dream revealing details about the killer, like the fact that he keeps those black balloons in his van. You might hear about Gwen’s nightmare premonition and think, “Cool!” Or you might take it as the first clue that “The Black Phone” is a horror film that’s going to be making up a lot of rules as it goes along. The director, Scott Derrickson , made the first “Doctor Strange” film (as well as the 2012 horror film “Sinister,” which also starred Hawke), and here, adapting a short story by Joe Hill, he has made a serial-killer movie that feels like a dark cousin to the comic-book world, with supernatural elements that drive the story, even as they get in the way of it becoming any sort of true nightmare.

The ’70s were an era when Middle American serial killers, the kind who would spread their crimes over decades in places like Wichita, appeared to be sprouting like mushrooms. Yet they were still in the process of becoming iconic; it would take popular culture to accomplish that. (“Red Dragon,” the first Thomas Harris novel to feature Hannibal Lecter, was published in 1981.) Now, however, they’re so iconic that they’re downright standard. In “The Black Phone,” the Grabber violates the bucolic setting but also fits rather snugly into it. The film presents him not as a complex figure of evil but as a pure screen archetype: the psycho with a dungeon next door. Hawke, apart from the Ethan-Hawke-as-demon mask, doesn’t have a lot to work with, and to up the creep factor he reflexively falls into mannerisms that may remind you of Buffalo Bill in “The Silence of the Lambs.” Hawke is such a well-liked actor that he’ll probably get a pass on this, but given the outcry that character caused 30 years ago in the LGBTQ community, you may wonder why Hawke allowed himself to drift into what amounts to a kind of sicko cliché.

In the dungeon, there’s one other object: an ancient black rotary phone hanging on the wall. The Grabber tells Finney that the phone doesn’t work, but it keeps ringing, and each timer Finney answers it the voice he hears on the other end belongs to…well, I won’t reveal it, but suffice to say that the movie has taken a leap beyond the everyday. Finney gets a lot of clues about the Grabber: what his games are, the weak points in the dungeon’s infrastructure (like a hole he starts to dig under loose tile, or a refrigerator hidden in a wall behind the bathroom). Much of this doesn’t lead anywhere, but it establishes that Finney has become part of a brotherhood of victims. He’s a bullied kid who’s going to learn to fight back!

“The Black Phone” carries you along on its own terms — that is, if you accept that it’s less an ingenious freak-out of a thriller than a kind of stylized contraption. It’s a horror ride that holds you, and it should have no trouble carving out an audience, but I didn’t find it particularly scary (the three or four jump-worthy moments are all shock cuts with booms on the soundtrack — the oldest trick in the book). The movie plays a game with the audience, rooting the action in tropes of fantasy and revenge that are supposed to up the stakes, but that in this case mostly lower them.

Reviewed at Tribeca Film Festival, June 18, 2022. MPA rating: R. Running time: 102 MIN.

• Production: A Universal Pictures release of a Blumhouse Productions, Crooked Highway production. Producers: Jason Blum, Scott Derrickson, C. Robert Cargill. Executive producers: Joe Hill, Ryan Turek, Christopher H. Warner.
• Crew: Director: Scott Derrickson. Screenplay: Scott Derrickson, C. Robert Cargill. Camera: Brett Jutkiewicz. Editor: Frédéric Thoraval. Music: Mark Korvan.
• With: Ethan Hawke, Mason Thames, Madeleine McGraw, Jeremy Davies, E. Roger Mitchell, Troy Rudeseal, James Ransone.

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There’s a Better Story The Black Phone Wishes It Could Tell

I haven’t read the Joe Hill short story that The Black Phone is based on, but watching the movie, it’s not hard to imagine what the source material must be like. In some ways, Scott Derrickson’s film still feels like a short story. It’s all setup and resolution, with little of the incident and complication that usually helps a feature-length movie come fully to life. In industry parlance, it feels like it’s missing a second act. But thanks to a host of excellent performances (and a few generic but effective scares), most viewers may not mind.

The film takes place in the year 1974; The Texas Chain Saw Massacre is in theaters, bandannas are in fashion, and the kung-fu craze is in full swing. In the suburbs of north Denver, however, a mysterious figure known as the Grabber is kidnapping teenage boys off the street. These disappearances have understandably invaded the fearful waking thoughts of local teen Finney Shaw (Mason Thames), even though he also has more immediate concerns on his mind — namely, a trio of savage bullies at school and an abusive father (Jeremy Davies, sporting an impressive pompadour and beard combo).

The deeply unstable Mr. Shaw terrorizes both the shy Finn and his headstrong little sister Gwen (Madeleine McGraw), but there is more to this family than meets the eye. Gwen is having dreams that feature specific details about the Grabber’s crimes that have not yet been made public, and the kids’ late mother apparently also had such premonitions and visions. Their alcoholic father is terrified at what might happen if his kids follow in the path of their mom, who we learn killed herself thanks to the voices and visions in her head. When Finn himself gets kidnapped, Gwen swings into action, desperately probing her dreams and breaking out a gauntlet of religious items (like some of Derrickson’s other films, The Black Phone has its share of Christian imagery) for clues to her beloved brother’s whereabouts.

Finn has been imprisoned in a large, dark basement by a masked, reedy-voiced psycho (Ethan Hawke, impressively unsettling in a role that almost never lets us see his whole face). The Grabber insists he will not hurt the child, but we know that he intends to do exactly that. Much of the film involves watching Finn scrape around this basement, and it’s to the 14-year-old Thames’s credit that his character’s predicament never feels repetitive or overtly downbeat. He brings a welcome mix of intelligence, bewilderment, and fear to the part — a complexity rare in young actors.

The Grabber’s basement is empty, save for a black phone that we’re told doesn’t work. Of course, as soon as the captor goes back upstairs, the phone rings. (The movie is, after all, called The Black Phone .) And yes, there is a voice on the other end of the line …

If you don’t want to know anything more about The Black Phone , you should probably stop reading at this point, although some of the following happens early enough that it feels more like part of the setup than an actual plot reveal. Either way, it’s hard to discuss the picture’s key weaknesses and strengths without addressing where it goes. Anyway, spoilers follow.

… The voices on the phone belong to the boys the Grabber has already killed. Finn can presumably hear them because his family is touched by a divine power. The boys are calling from some sort of afterlife, and even though their memories are slowly drifting away, they are able to guide Finn through his predicament — some of it via specific bits of advice, some of it via gnomic, Signs -like clues. Derrickson also uses these phone conversations to stage a number of jump scares which feel somewhat tacked on. These jolts are Finn’s own visions, it seems, but they’re never quite explained within the logic of this world — almost as if the filmmakers came up with them after realizing that mere phone conversations with ghosts wouldn’t provide the requisite genre thrills.

The movie is confused in conception, which is a shame because there’s potential here. The premise is genuinely creepy, and the conceit of phone calls from the afterlife is rife with possibility. When the dead boys first begin to speak, we get a couple of touching flashbacks to their lives, and it feels like the picture might be headed in a more emotional direction. That’s not the only promising idea that’s abandoned. The always-interesting James Ransone shows up as a weird, coked-up amateur sleuth who looks like he’s about to take the movie in a whole other direction — but his presence, sadly, is relatively short-lived and pointless, not quite enough to even count as a red herring. In most other horror movies, this might be a minor narrative nuisance, but The Black Phone at times feels so undernourished dramatically that these dropped subplots feel like missed opportunities.

Even Gwen’s search for Finn, to which the film cuts at opportune moments, is never as filled out as we might like. What makes it work, however, is 13-year-old McGraw’s electrifying performance as the little girl. It would have been easy to play this precocious, strong-willed child as a cutesy, foul-mouthed kid detective, but her concern for her brother shines through. Whenever Gwen is onscreen, the film locks into its more emotional register: We feel her anguish, her growing sense of helplessness.

So much so that the film loses some of its power whenever it cuts away from her. But it has to cut away, because Finn’s dramatic thread is where we get all the jump scares and the creepy imagery and the predictable escape-room theatrics. This tension between the sister’s narrative and the brother’s seems indicative of the rift at the heart of this picture. All throughout, The Black Phone feels like it’s trying to reconcile typical horror elements with the more expressive and tender story Derrickson clearly wants to tell. The reconciliation never really comes, but the cast gets us there anyway.

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