At The Movies: Kid versus killer in The Black Phone
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Still from the film The Black Phone starring Mason Thames (above) and Ethan Hawke.
PHOTO: UIP
The Black Phone (NC16)
103 minutes, opens July 21
4 stars
The story: It is the 1970s and Finney (Mason Thames) is a 13-year-old boy coping with bullies at school and problems at home, where sister Gwen (Madeleine McGraw) and father Terrence (Jeremy Davies) live. His town has been terrorised by a kidnapper nicknamed The Grabber (Ethan Hawke), who makes Finney his latest victim. Trapped in a soundproof room, the boy finds help from an unexpected source.
Two reasons to watch this horror work from Sinister (2012) director Scott Derrickson:
1. Villain on the edge
Central to the film is Finney's difficult adolescence - he is in trouble at home and in school because of a character flaw. Thepsychologically manipulative Grabber exploits that flaw at every turn.
Hawke does not have much screen time, but his performance as the peevish, sadistic kidnapper - a man ready to explode into violence at any moment - makes the Grabber one of the best baddies in recent memory.
2. The Stephen King vibe comes full circle
If the idea of 1970s kids allied with a supernatural force to fight a Big Evil sounds familiar, that is because horror master Stephen King used that setting for the novel It (1986). The Black Phone is adapted from a short story by King's son, writer Joe Hill, who pays unapologetic homage to his father's style.
Hill should be allowed to steal from his dad. After all, the Duffer brothers plundered the King playbook for the hugely enjoyable Netflix series Stranger Things (2016 to present).
To director Derrickson's credit, The Black Phone is not a total King clone. Instead of relying on a music-driven retro mood and kids-on-bikes small-town nostalgia, the director focuses on Finney's brutal coming-of-age story.
