Review: The Black Phone (2021)

In Scott Derrickson’s The Black Phone, which is based on the short story by Joe Hill, a pedophile serial killer known as The Grabber (Ethan Hawke) kidnaps children and keeps them in his sound-proofed basement room that’s empty save for a mattress, a toilet, some rugs, and an old, disconnected black phone that hangs from the wall. The Grabber wears strange demon masks to hide his face and plays mind games with his captives, often leaving the door to the basement unlocked, goading them to try to escape so he can punish them and justify his actions to himself. The Grabber is evil, but he’s just a man who does evil things. He’s scary because of what he does, not because of what he represents. In this way, The Black Phone offers a refreshing counter to so many contemporary horror films by dealing with evil that’s tangible and not mostly metaphorical.

Unlike so many prestige horror films of recent years—or “elevated horror films,” if we want to use the popular yet absurd moniker of online discourse—The Black Phone is not about horror that acts as a metaphor for societal evils or personal traumas. It is not social commentary or artistic posturing masquerading as horror. It is a horror film about a good person, 13-year-old Finney (Mason Thomas), who is kidnapped by a bad person, The Grabber, and who has to survive and escape before becoming yet another victim.

Similar to Scott Derrickon’s previous horror hit, Sinister, The Black Phone is not devoid of fantastical elements and symbolic connections to grander themes, whether religious associations or explorations of realities as mundane as childhood bullying. It deals with the supernatural, as the black phone of the title allows Finney to talk to The Grabber’s past victims and glean their advice on how to beat him and escape. The presence of the supernatural allows Derrickson to ponder one of the most fundamental theological questions: why does God allow evil to exist?

Not that he digs into this question in great detail. This isn’t an Ingmar Bergman film. Much of the filmmakers’ focus is on recreating the past. The film is set in 1978 and has a nostalgic pallor to the grainy cinematography, period-accurate costumes, and occasional needle drops. There are obvious comparisons to It (Joe Hill is Stephen King’s son, after all, and shares with his father a penchant for stories about human goodness and frailty mixed with the supernatural), as well as Stranger Things, which is deeply influenced by King’s work.

But unlike Stranger Things, and even It, The Black Phone doesn’t view the past through rose-coloured glasses. It spends more time showing the abuses and indiginities of childhood than the joys, such as how Finney’s father (Jeremy Davies) beats him and his sister, Gwen (Madeleine McGraw). His father isn’t a monster. He clearly cares about his kids, which becomes apparent when Finney is kidnapped, but he lets his anger and fear dictate his actions instead of his love. He’s motivated by a fear of loss.

The opening scene is instructive in how the film bursts the bubble of nostalgia. In it, we watch a baseball game where Finney is pitching. The star player on the other team, Bruce (Tristan Pravong), comes up to bat. Finney gets one ball past him for a strike. And another. Bruce can’t catch up to his speed. But then on his third pitch, Bruce takes his fastball deep and rounds the bases in heroic fashion, having walked off Finney’s team. In the post-game handshake line, Bruce tells Finney he almost had him and that his arm is special. He’s the cool dude and Finney can only bask in his glory, even in defeat.

For a moment, we follow Bruce in the aftermath of his triumph. He rides on his bike through the neighbourhood—the bike a symbol of freedom in the nostalgic world of stories like this—and spots some cute girls from class. He shoots them a smile and even turns to check them out as he rides away. They giggle in response, charmed that the cool kid, Bruce, notices them. Bruce is on top of the world. But then a big black van pulls into view behind Bruce and the soundtrack switches to an ominous drone. The screen fades to black before we see what happens next.

The evil blots out any nostalgia in The Black Phone. The Grabber, with his silly demon masks, soft, crackly voice, and elaborate front as a small-time magician, may look like a magical villain out of Goosebumps or Fear Street, but he’s mundane and all the more terrifying for it. Derrickson and co-writer C. Robert Cargill play to our associations with the genre and entertainment of this sort, and then use our expectation for nostalgia as a cudgel against us. It’s rather cruel at times, just as the entire scenario is cruel for Finney and the other children. But it’s effective horror storytelling. It gets us invested in Finney and his predicament and rooting for him to escape.

The mundanity of the evil in The Black Phone also plays alongside the supernatural elements, instead of overwriting them. As previously mentioned, the supernatural exists in The Black Phone. Not only is the black phone a phone to the afterlife, but Finney’s sister, Gwen, also receives psychic visions of The Grabber’s crimes, which are dotted with clues. She prays for guidance throughout the film, but only receives coded messages. 

Derrickson, who is Christian, uses the film’s supernatural elements to demonstrate not only the existence of the supernatural, and specifically the divine (as in Gwen’s visions from and prayers to Christ), but also to answer his earlier question about the existence of evil. Derrickson’s answer is that God doesn’t create evil, but he can save people from it. If Sinister rests upon the idea of the metaphysical existence of evil and its influence on material reality, then The Black Phone rests on the idea that the only answer to terrestrial evil is supernatural grace. The Grabber is human. He’s a man driven by evil appetites. Men like him bring forth evil into the world. But he is not all-powerful. He can be defeated, although his evil can only be extinguished by a grace that lies beyond human beings. It’s a very Christian approach to horror, and perhaps unappealing to some viewers, but horror has always had a religious streak, especially Derrickson’s horror films. 

It’s also worth noting the film checks many of the boxes of more conventional horror filmmaking. There are jumpscares. There is a slow build of dread. There is some questionable acting—these are child actors, after all. There is some obvious writing and overly blunt dialogue and a penchant to spell things out for the audience. There are positives to its approach, such as the film’s success at investing us in Finney’s attempt to escape. There are drawbacks, such as how it often changes the rules of its storyworld or unnecessarily complicates things in order to amplify the climactic payoff. 

There’s also no attempt to sanitize this vision of the world or its darkness. There are swears and violence and an unflinching look at what humans are capable of. Everything is not resolved by good ol’ Christian living. This isn’t a “faith-based” picture by any means. It’s much more interesting than that. It’s a successful horror film with some passionate commentary about what evil looks like and what can overcome it. Its answer and resolution may not please everyone. But then again, horror movies aren’t made to please. They’re made to scare, and this one does, in more ways than one.

7 out of 10

The Black Phone (2021, USA)

Directed by Scott Derrickson; written by Scott Derrickson and C. Robert Cargill, based on the short story by Joe Hill; starring Mason Thames, Madeleine McGraw, Ethan Hawke, Jeremy Davies, James Ransone.

Related Posts