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The Black Phone is the newest blockbuster horror film to hit screens across the country. It has everything going for it, as well. A great cast, including the likes of Ethan Hawke, Jeremy Davies, and Ethan Ransone. Potent source material from the mind of Joe Hill, the son of Stephen King himself. And a successful horror director, Scott Derrickson, at the helm of the whole project.
Does the film take all of that promising material and combine it into something scary and entertaining. It absolutely does, and it also acts as a bit of a torch-passing between the King father and son horror duo.
Calls On The Black Phone
The Black Phone follows the story of a boy living in North Denver in the 1970s. A string of abductions involving children his age, and even a few he knows, has the entire area on edge. It only gets worse for the boy after he finds himself becoming “The Grabber’s” newest abductee. But a series of mysterious calls on a busted rotary phone may be the boy’s key to salvation.
The story here proves that Joe Hill knows horror just as well as his father, and even shows a lot of his dad’s influence. Both writers are acutely aware of how to write powerful stories about kids dealing with pure evil and trauma. For Stephen King, it’s movies like Stand By Me and IT. Joe Hill began down this path with stories like his breakout success Locke And Key, and The Black Phone is just his newest big horror tale.
This movie tells an extremely human story with just enough supernatural elements in the mix to make it stand out. It also does an amazing job building up an interesting and truly despicable villain. It subtly explores pieces of him without ever pulling back the curtain so much that it spoils the terror of the unknown.
Like Father Like Son
The Black Phone is one of the best horror films to release in 2022 thus far. It’s also an amazing return to the genre for director Scott Derrickson. A director who previously made a huge splash with the hit 2012 paranormal horror film Sinister. More recently he was on the Marvel team and was the director for Doctor Strange and an executive producer for the recent sequel. The Black Phone sees him make an impressive return and will definitely leave fans hoping to see him do more spooky material in the future.
The score for The Black Phone: 8 out of 10.