The Black Phone

The latest adaptation of horror novelist, comic book writer, and short-story author Joe Hill (Horns, In the Tall Grass, NOS4A2) is this 1978 period piece about child abduction in a Denver Colorado suburb. Mason Thames plays Finney Blake, a 13-year-old boy living with his alcoholic father (Jeremy Davies) and his precocious, possibly psychic, younger sister Gwen (Madeleine McGraw). The haircuts, fashions, bikes, and bullying styles all recall the era to a tee, which is nice for those of us who grew up in it. Not only are we currently going through a period of peak nostalgia for late '70s and early '80s culture—specifically the films of young Steven Speilberg and the peak output of Hill's own father Steven King—but horror movies often benefit from being set in the past (especially if they have the word "phone" in their title).

Finney becomes the latest kid abducted by a sadistic serial killer known in the town as The Grabber (Ethan Hawke). This bad dude wears spooky Halloween masks, traps his prey in a soundproof basement, and occasionally leaves the door unlocked awaiting them shirtless at the top of the stairs. The paedophile subtext is hard to miss, but it's left curiously undeveloped. Is this because the R-rated film is meant to appeal to young audiences? Are we meant to find Hawke's villain kind of cool despite his dastardly acts? I wasn't clear. Director Scott Derrickson and his co-screenwriter C. Robert Cargill open up Hill's short story in ways that muddle the material. This modestly budgeted Blumhouse picture might have worked better if its setting and scope were limited almost entirely to the basement, as is the case in the short story. But the director and cast probably weren't up to pulling off the challenge of making that approach sustainably gripping. Thus they introduce multiple supernatural elements to a story that would have been more powerful if the only mysterious aspect had been the voices heard through the titular black phone that hangs on the basement wall.