The action of the horror film Black Phone takes place in 1978 and the choice of setting is very deliberate. This is an excuse for director Scott Derrickson to use the same type of roaring needles of the ’70s – in this case the nostalgic sounds of The Edgar Winter Group, Pink Floyd, Sweet, and Chic – also seen in the last two – part of the adaptation of “It”. by Stephen King. He also gives realism to the many scenes in which children ruthlessly harass and kill each other with snot without seeing a concerned adult. This leads to the most effective product of the film period: a palpable sense of danger.
The late 1970s were not the best era for serial killings in America. (This did not happen until the mid-1980s.) But during this era, a number of high-profile cases fell apart, and combined with the birth of television murder trials and rising crime rates, the stories helped fuel paranoia among the general public. However, attitudes towards raising children have not yet caught up with this concern. And with the Stranger Danger campaigns of the 1980s, which remained for several years, 1978 was the best time to drag unattended children into unmarked vans.
Based on a brief history by Locke & Key and NOS4A2 author Joe Hill, Black Phone used this fear early, with wide shots of vans lurking behind piles of children coming home from school, along with close-ups of leaflets for missing children in the newsletter. of community boards. Brothers and sisters Feeney (Mason Thames) and Gwen (Madeleine McGraw) are well aware of the rumors behind these disappearances attributed to a local boogie man known as The Hornbeam.
Image: Universal Pictures
A common superstition is that anyone who utters the name of The Grabber out loud will be the next to be grabbed. Feeney believes in this myth, which opens it up to ridicule from younger sister Gwen. But his fear is justified. First, his best and only friend, Robin (Miguel Casares Mora), a tough child who likes horror movies, falls victim to the Robber (Ethan Hawke, who has just escaped from another villain in the MCU Moon Knight series). Feeney himself is abducted and wakes up on a dirty mattress in a concrete cell in the basement of an anonymous, dilapidated house in their low-income neighborhood in Denver.
Most of the film takes place in The Grabber’s basement, like the whole original Hill story. Here, Feeney communicates with the disembodied voices of The Grabber’s five previous victims through the black phone in the title. (The cable is cut, but the phone still rings. Scary!) Each of these boys tried to escape the Robber in their own way, and each of them called Feeney for advice on how to survive where they couldn’t. The key is not to resist; as one boy explains, “If you don’t play, he can’t win.”
All these elements are freezing the spine. And the Black Phone has a grim sense of helplessness, especially in the slow-motion footage from above, gliding over groups of adults with flashlights, searching for children the audience knows are already dead. Institutions fail children at all levels in this film: Parents are alcoholics or absent, if not outright abusive. Detectives are so incompetent that all their best clues come from Gwen’s prophetic dreams. (Joe Hill is the son of Stephen King. No wonder there’s a child with mental powers in the mix.)
Beyond the sense of painful inevitability, however, the Black Phone is a mess. The main problem is the performances, which range from puzzling to downright shocking. Jeremy Davis is especially bad as the drunken father of Feeney and Gwen, whose grumbling and screaming are not recorded as genuinely pathetic or threatening. Hawk is also too ubiquitous to be read as credibly frightening: When we first see The Grabber, his face is painted white and he speaks in a high, affected voice reminiscent of Atlanta’s Teddy Perkins. Strange right? What is he trying to mean and how does he fit into his psychosis? It doesn’t matter – this is the first and last time this character will appear in the movie.
Image: Universal Pictures
In later scenes, Hawk oscillates between childlike innocence and a throaty growl, but without the commitment that makes such performances so disturbing. (Imagine James McAvoy throwing himself into his many personalities in Split, for example.) And with a mask covering at least half of his face at all times, the intense vocal performance would really help The Grabber and his distorted play of “naughty.” boy “” provoke sighs from the audience instead of giggling.
Outside the basement, Black Phone’s tonal problems get worse. There is nothing more shocking in the film than the scandalous series of vomiting and leprous “Angel of the Morning” in It: Chapter Two, but the film’s oscillations between comedy and horror are also undeserved and ineffective. Add jumping fears that do nothing but add visual interest to the repetitive scenes of Feeney talking on the phone in an empty room, and the Black Phone manages to keep everything that made Hill’s short story so scary and at the same time I undermine.
The Black Phone debuted in theaters on June 24.
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