This One’s For the Ghouls: “The Black Phone" Review
This October, Citizen Jane is premiering a host of new content in a new series: This One's For the Ghouls: Women, the "Other" and Horror. Focusing exclusively on the horror genre, this month will contain spine-tingling essays and reviews discussing our Stephens students' favorite horror films. We'll dig deep (six feet deep, in fact) into the roles and portrayals of women in horror, as well as the abject -- the "other" -- and how those elements interact in some of the most well-known (and/or gruesomest) films in the canon. Check back here soon for more!
The Black Phone is a 2022 horror film based on a 2004 short story. It was delayed several months, originally slated for a January release, eventually hitting theaters in June. That was a smart decision — traditionally, January is where studios dump films they feel they will take a loss on, and The Black Phone has shown to be a rousing success, especially due to all the hype it received from the pushed back release date. The horror community was excited for this release, and promotional material and articles appeared across all platforms, including such well-known publications as Fangoria.
The film is referred to as a “coming of age” horror (sometimes known as “kids on bikes”), a subgenre that’s risen in popularity in recent years with the It series and Stranger Things. It’s appropriate, then, that this latest entry in the genre is from the mind of Joe Hill, who wrote the original short story it was based on, and is the son of Stephen King, who is essentially the father of the genre with stories like The Body (adapted to film as Stand By Me) and It. It features a child-actor-forward cast, alongside Ethan Hawke as the antagonist.
The Black Phone absolutely lived up to the hype for me. It’s a dark, frightening film, boasting an overcast atmosphere with heavy clouds and dreary basements, and featuring mature performances from its several child actors taking center stage. It follows a young boy and his sister, played by Mason Thames and Madeleine McGraw respectively. The boy is kidnapped by a mysterious figure called “the Grabber.” While his young sister searches for him, he attempts several escapes with the aid of the ghosts of other children killed by the Grabber. He’s able to communicate with them through the mysterious titular black phone on one wall of his basement prison.
The performances of the young actors are vital to this movie, and both Finney and his sister are expertly portrayed. Both seem at once mature and vulnerable, they bring gravity to the film. And the cast of ghost children are equally eerie and sad. Ethan Hawke is also excellent in his first turn at horror villain, menacing and yet delivering such an unexpectedly cheery and volatile performance that you can’t help but be unsettled.
The movie is captivating for the entirety of the nearly two hour runtime. It holds an 82% Fresh score on Rotten Tomatoes (if you subscribe to those kinds of ratings), and is an excellent adaptation/expansion of the original source material. The pushed back release date likely only benefited the movie’s performance.
