31 Days of Halloween: The Black Phone

2022, Scott Derrickson (Sinister) -- download

I was right, I do recall enjoying Sinister, Derrickson's last horror flick also starring Ethan Hawke. I didn't recall being annoyed by how trope driven it was. This time round, we are not as powered by the common plot points, as we are something newish. I cannot ever honestly say new properly, as no horror movie is ever truly original, and that is sort of the point. This is my usual winding wooded path to saying I really enjoyed the movie.

From the opening credit bits, I knew this was not typical. No crow flying overhead, no lonely country road seen from on high, just a setting the scene of the late 70s, built with less than nostalgic images of kids in school, and the establishing of child disappearances, all grainy home video style. I commented quickly, as we met our main characters, that this was a sign of a film maker that knows what they are doing, just in the dialogue between Finney (Mason Thames, For All Mankind) and Gwen (Madeleine McGraw, Outcast), adolescent siblings, as we meet them. It rung of truth and emotion, unlike the stilted conversations between the girls in the abandoned My Best Friend's Exorcism. Yeah, I guess it bugs me how bad that was, before we turned it off. The two do not have a good family life; Dad's a drunk who abuses the kids, and they hand off who gets to take care of him. Finney is also being bullied at school, but is surviving because he tutors the tiny scarily violent kid. Gwen let's slip that she has dreams about the disappearing kids, but that just leads to another beating from her father. She wants to help but...

Then more kids directly connected to Finney go missing, and then.... Finney himself is taken.

This is one of the movies that has no need to hide who the bad guy is, as he (Ethan Hawke, In a Valley of Violence) has lead billing. The Grabber, as the kids call him, is a fucking scary guy in a black van, during the height of Scary Guys In Van urban legends, so I am not sure how any kids trust him, but with a quick magic trick and disarming black balloons, he tosses them into the back of the black van.

Finney immediately knows how this is going to go. Stuck in a deep basement, behind a reinforced door, where no sound escapes, Finney has finally had enough with the bullying. He cannot leave his sister alone at home with their broken father. Meanwhile Gwen is tortured all on her own, her prophetic dreams (which her father wants to drive from her, as they drove his wife to suicide) are not helping. I was moved that the drunken abusive father proves to not be a monster, and is broken even further by his son's disappearance. And Finney has other allies...

There is a phone on the wall. A phone not connected to anything. But it rings, and the voices of previously taken kids comes out of it for Finney to hear. And they begin coaching him towards escape.

I have voiced before that I like horror movies which take a turn towards the heroic reversal. No, not the Final Girl aspect, but where the victim pulls up their pants and decides their fate for themselves. Finney does this, along with the allyship of the kids who have all died at the hands of The Grabber, eerie voices and visions from the Other Side. 

And what a monster to slay, is Hawke as The Grabber! I am sorely disappointed that his devil-clown mask has not instantly become a pop culture icon. This mask, which comes in two pieces: a top of horns and nose, and a lower interchangeable jaw and sometimes mouth, hides not his appearance from us or Finney (for we have already seen his face in full) but his own horror at himself, from himself. Some aspects are almost friendly, and others are gleeful. And one is great and terrible.

I thoroughly enjoyed how this movie played out, in mood and atmosphere, sound design and imagery. I wondered at so many times where it would go, as in horror you can survive or you can end with further reversal and loss. Little things came together, not as twists, but as pieces making a whole. This may be one of the season's best.