Proper new screen horror villains are rare. While it seems like they pop up all the time, the ones that stick are pretty few and far between. The ’80s had a glut of horror movies with would-be iconic villains. Three stuck: Michael Myers (from the ’70s, but still), Freddy, and Jason. The only ’90s horror icon that stuck was Ghostface from Scream. From the ’00s, maybe Jigsaw.
From the beginning The Black Phone’s marketing was focused on the Grabber. The bizarre mask with the big glasses, it’s off-putting enough that it doesn’t quite feel fun. Which is good, for a horror movie. And the Grabber, played by Ethan Hawke, doesn’t feel like some kind of franchise villain because of his grimy, desperate reality.
Which, again, is a good thing, and helps make The Black Phone a surprisingly good horror film.
Set in late ’70s Denver suburbs, brother and sister Finney and Gwen Blake live lives that are layers of anxiety. Finney has bullies at school. Gwen has secret dreams she can’t let their father know about. That father, played by Jeremy Davies with his typical intensity, is routinely drunk, and routinely on edge.
But so is the whole community, because for months children have been disappearing. The Grabber is practically a mythical figure. Finney, a bit of a wuss, doesn’t even want to hear his name when Gwen speaks it.
Anyone who has seen the trailer knows Finney ends up grabbed and locked in the Grabber’s basement prison. But that doesn’t happen until about 25 minutes into the movie, so there’s plenty of time to develop some texture around the characters. Finney and Gwen’s world revolves around navigating high school life while not upsetting their dad. When the police find out about a dream Gwen has, that upsets their dad, who beats her with a strap. She’s not to have psychic dreams. Things like that drove her mother to suicide.
A lot of these story points are pretty Stephen King-esque, which is not a shock since the film is based on a story by his son, Joe Hill. In the story, the Grabber was a clown. Well, that would look like an It rip-off, so in the film he’s a magician.
We never see him do a magic trick, and we never really see his face. We also never understand why he does what he does. Ethan Hawke’s performance is one of studied confusion. He has some sort of script for these kids, one we feel he didn’t write. He has some sort of history… including with the black phone.
That phone is on the wall in the basement. And, despite its frayed, disconnected wires, it still occasionally rings. On the other end (again, a detail from the trailer) are the previous victims of the Grabber. It’s a Souls-like videogame: they made it just so far, died, and have hints to give the new player.
The film was directed by Scott Derrickson, whose work I’ve found hit or miss. The Exorcism of Emily Rose was good. The remake of The Day the Earth Stood Still was execrable. Doctor Strange is the only Marvel movie from the last 10 years I’ve willingly watched more than once.
But in The Black Phone I found an uncommon balance between horror thrills and proper storytelling. There are several moments that have a kind of texture that’s often missing from cheaper stories. Finney, as I said, is a wuss, and he has a protector in Robin. But Robin ends up one of the Grabber’s victims, and so Finney’s bullies come calling. They get him on the ground, but don’t count on Gwen, who picks up a rock and smashes the lead bully’s head in.
She, in turn, gets a kick to the teeth. There’s a brief moment, her with bleeding gums, the lead bully with a split scalp, sitting side by side and looking overwhelmed. The fight went a little too far. It’s a touch of humanity which is all too uncommon in modern storytelling.
And the Grabber, too, is bizarrely human even when we never see his face. He engages with Finney constantly and doesn’t seem entirely in control of himself. And he’s irritated with that fact. It’s a compelling performance by Ethan Hawke, a resigned serial killer who seems to take little joy from the script he’s been made to play out.
And, at the risk of being spoilery, it’s not a solved problem at the end of the movie. Why the Grabber is grabbing is never revealed, and even the hints are minimal. If the film were entirely plot focused, that would be a big problem.
But the heart of the movie is the connection of brother and sister, Gwen and Finney. While he’s missing, she tries to channel her psychic dreams to her rescue. She believes her dreams come from Jesus and is very vulgar and blasphemous when they don’t meet her criteria.
The Black Phone is not perfect. While it tries to recreate the ’70s, there’s a touch too much cleanliness and conspicuous art direction to really sell it. Ironically, one of the characters extolls the virtues of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, whose aesthetic this movie could have benefited from. And there’s one comic performance which I think doesn’t do the film credit.
But it’s an excellent horror thriller. There might be a sequel in the works, but the Grabber, to me, has too much detail as a character to be a proper franchise villain. He’s re-enacting some script he doesn’t even understand, to proper horrifying results. And the entire film has a surprising amount of detail and texture for a modern horror film. Also, it’s creepy. Occasionally scary. It does its job.
The Black Phone has been released on 4K UHD and Blu-ray by Universal. Extras on the disc include a commentary track by Director Scott Derrickson. Videos extras include a pair of deleted scenes (2 min), “Ethan Hawke’s Evil Turn” (5 min) about Hawke’s performance; “Answering the Call: Behind the Scenes of The Black Phone” (11 min), a brief making of featurette; “Devil in the Design” 5 min), a featurette on the production design; “Super 8 Set” (2 min), a short on filming the dream sequences in Super 8; and Shadowprowler, a short film by Derrickson.
