the black phone movie review

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The first time a film left me shivering in the dark and white-knuckling bedsheets was when I was 13, watching a slideshow of gore and brutality in Scott Derrickson ’s " Sinister ." Even upon rewatch, after 10 years and the addition of countless horror movies to my watch log, it still makes me quiver.

Upon hearing of "The Black Phone," a triple reunion with Derrickson, co-writer Robert Cargill, and star Ethan Hawke , I was filled with excited dread. Derrickson’s victims are tethered by their consequences. Where "Sinister" had them spun in a web inherent to their demise, "The Black Phone" connects its victims with a thread crucial to survival.

Based on the short story of the same name, written by Joe Hill , the son of Stephen King , "The Black Phone" chronicles a suspenseful tale of The Grabber, a child killer who snatches teen boys in broad daylight never to be seen again. When Finney ( Mason Thames ) becomes the next captive, held in a soundproof basement, he begins to receive phone calls from The Grabber’s previous victims through a disconnected landline.

Stylistically, the film is nostalgic, reminiscent of vintage photographs and the era of striped baby tees, flared jeans, and The Ramones. Warm browns and oranges, film grain, and filtered light flood the screen. But this idyllic '70s suburbia is corrupted by Derrickson’s horror.

The only interruption of the otherwise consistent color scheme is the vibrancy of blood and the neon of police lights, making these moments all the more jarring. The weathered concrete of the basement is painted with brushstrokes of rust and blood: an evidential mural of violence unfettered. The upbeat '70s soundtrack is interrupted by a bassy, resonant score that reverberates in your ribs, sinks into your eardrums, and at times sounds like you’re hearing it from underground in the Grabber’s basement. The film’s opening credits flash through nostalgic B-roll of the halcyon everyday occurrences of suburban youth—popsicles, baseball games, and sunny avenues—only to be interlaced with the vision of bloody knees and stacks of missing persons posters.

This juxtaposition of calm and collection being face forward while violence festers underneath is not only stylistic, but thematic. Timid Finney and his spunky sister Gwen ( Madeleine McGraw ), after dealing with belligerent bullies at school, go home to not be raised by their abusive alcoholic father. “I’ll look after Dad,” becomes a pattern of dialogue throughout the film, when Finney is left to return home while his sister stays with a friend. Son looks after father and siblings raise each other, kids protect each other from bullies while school staff is absent during adolescent brawls, Gwen (with her clairvoyant abilities) leads the police investigation, and past victims communicate with Finney while he’s in the clutches of a killer. It’s this commonality of a child-to-child support system in the absence of reliable adults that makes "The Black Phone" more than a simple story.

Derrickson and Cargill craft a nuanced, multi-layered narrative that takes horror elements and supports them with attentive discussion of cycles of abuse, trauma, and the bond of youth. Hawke’s Grabber is characterized by personality reversal. His faux-jolly disposition flaunts animated mannerisms and a high-pitched voice. It’s eerily childlike, hitching itself to a suggestion of trauma-based age regression behavior, and juxtaposing with the adult-like profanity and maturity with which the kids speak. But the zany harlequin act is fleeting, leaving Finney at the mercy of a total change: a husky, deep tone of voice and unforgiving, violent demeanor.

It’s in these moments where Hawke flexes his performance and versatility. His villainy is unpredictable and volatile. He expertly tiptoes a dissonant line of sprightly youthfulness and depravity. Switching on a dime, and with a mask covering the lower half of his face for most of the film, his acting relies on body language and the emotive flickers of his eyes. Though he was hesitant to play a villain , Hawke more than succeeds, and the emotional dramatic acting that’s laid the foundation for his celebrity translates perfectly to an adversarial role.

Though Hawke haunts the screen, it is the performances of the child actors that pack marrow into the bones of "The Black Phone." The finesse with which Thames and McGraw seamlessly balance a wide range of emotions is a feat. Fear, anger, desperation, and indignation drizzle delicately into moments of youthful glee and adolescent comedy. The punchlines in "The Black Phone" are natural with how the film centralizes young teenagers.

Both Thames and McGraw receive moments of spotlight, and use every minute of individual attention to shred any emotional distance afforded by the screen. Yet some of the most poignant scenes occur in their wordless moments together, where they potently portray an airtight sibling bond in the face of abuse and adversity.

"The Black Phone" is a saga of support and resilience disguised as a semi-paranormal serial murderer flick. Underpinned by emotional performances across the board and a commanding atmosphere, "The Black Phone" aces its foundational qualities and allows its nuances to take control. The gore is secondary to the story, with character development taking first string, but by no means does the film neglect to thrill. Rather, it’s your care for Finney and the intensity of the film’s skillfully crafted suspense that draws your knees to your chest and your nails to your teeth.

Available in theaters tomorrow.

Peyton Robinson

Peyton Robinson is a freelance film writer based in Chicago, IL.

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Film Credits

The Black Phone (2022)

Rated R for violence, bloody images, language and some drug use.

102 minutes

Ethan Hawke as The Grabber

Mason Thames as Finney Shaw

Madeleine McGraw as Gwen Shaw

Jeremy Davies as Mr. Shaw

James Ransone as Max

Michael Banks Repeta as Griffin

Spencer Fitzgerald as Buzz

Scott Derrickson

Writer (based on the short story by)

C. Robert Cargill

Cinematographer

Brett Jutkiewicz
Frédéric Thoraval
Mark Korven

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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 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

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‘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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The Black Phone (2021)

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