To be a child is sometimes the scariest thing in the world. Childhood can be horrifying because it is a period when one is too young to fully comprehend and experience life’s complicated machinations, as well as to protect oneself from both emotional and physical threats. Such vulnerability could be due to monsters under the bed, parents fighting out loud or bullies at school or even social anxiety experienced by teenagers during their first love. As such, it is not surprising that most movies are based on coming of age while other horror or supernatural media depends on childhood for storytelling.
The movie The Black Phone also belongs to this category and represents a brutality of being a kid. In this film, Finney Shaw just experiences everything that could happen with any kid – he has one dead parent and another who gets drunk repeatedly and abuses him, very brutal bullies at school, social anxiety around his crush, occasional cowardly tendencies towards scary things including loneliness; moreover, he starts off the movie losing his team the game at softball. However, all these sufferings are nothing compared to what happens later after he gets kidnapped by a psycho killer called The Grabber.
Finney’s life is starting dark in The Black Phone and getting darker still however there are moments that lighten up this gloominess. His sister Gwen lets some light into his miserable existence; she’s an incredibly complex character who can tell off policemen then pound kids with stones who dare mess around with her brother but always shortens her dollhouse curtains daily before setting up her religious icons for prayer purposes. She is quite an amazing person since she fears almost nothing in this cruel world except maybe for her father who himself has become something like a nightmare gone wrong. This severely alcoholic and diseased man filled with rage over losing his wife sees Gwen as an image of her mother which disgusts him; Mr Shaw has no place left in him save violence which makes him appear pathetic even more.
That is what The Black Phone is about – violence as a human ritual of protection. For instance, in this small Denver suburb in 1978, the school bullies constantly beat up others in order to maintain their positions and pride, the drunken dad belts his son so that he could show dominance over him and save his ego from being shattered; Gwen takes the same path of aggression to protect her brother while Robin, Finney’s only friend on earth also resorts to the same method. (One key scene shows Robin beating a bully within an inch of his life, while Finney walks away in disgust). In defending ones self and crumbling mind, The Grabber uses violence which is clearly an elaborate system whose formality is apparent. What is interesting is that till the last few moments of this film, The Grabber seems to be almost the only character who does not make anyone else bleed.
This results from The Black Phone writer or director Scott Derrickson as well as his frequent co-writer C. Robert Cargill (both of whom have worked along with Ethan Hawke on Sinister) having portrayed a bleak world characterized by misanthropy and cruelty. Although they may have done it unnecessarily, there might be an argument that all the violence going on in this small town is actually exaggerated to convey how young ones like Finney feel.
This could be an explanation for some logical leaps in The Black Phone; it is the small things that make it possible for people to stretch and suspend their disbelief such as allegories use. For instance, in a very tiny town where five children have gone missing, there is no curfew or heavy police presence on the streets yet a huge black van obviously abducting kids pulls up in bright daylight. In the same vein, how can you throw rocks at kid’s heads and bash their faces into a pulp with literally no consequences? As such, albeit not the most realistic showpiece, this film uses its exaggerations to depict the reality of traumatic childhood.
That’s why this review took time to address horror in The Black Phone because so did the movie itself. While its first half is pretty engrossing, real scares and horror don’t start till later even though they include some noteworthy jumpscares and eerie moments.
For those who want a straightforward scary movie however, they may find themselves disappointed by how patient this film often demands as The Black Phone is kind of like what The Sixth Sense was only using horror genre aspects to tell dramatic stories about boys. It reminded me more of Stephen King rewriting Room (whose short story it actually was) than anything else.
The titular supernatural device underlines the allegorical nature of The Black Phone. Nevertheless antiquated and disconnected on concrete walls in bare basement where Finney is imprisoned still rings. Through its dark receiver, Finney is able to communicate with the five dead boys that Grabber kidnapped; each has been giving him advice through his experience down here providing hints to escape from clues picked up during their stay.
At the same time Gwen’s dreams provide her details concerning Grabber while she carries some of her own mother’s ‘touched’ abilities (which Mr. Shaw personally resents). Each deceased victim or psychic-induced dream leads to an impasse but also builds suspense as by the end they ingeniously converge.
Lastly, The Black Phone’s ending establishes that most parts of the film are actually an allegory for coming-of-age about taking a stand against life and protecting oneself from its numerous threats—it is Finney reckoning with his past. This is evident through some similarities between the two different violent male adults of the movie, The Grabber and Mr. Shaw and how both of them hold belt in their hands to punish somebody else. It represents Finney’s childhood itself and becomes every tormented self-conscious lonely child’s basement that figuratively one has to escape in order to grow up.
Scott Derrickson’s The Black Phone is his walking out of the theoretical basement of his own making. As he tells Wenlei Ma for an Australian news site, this doctor strange director’s hometown had a major impact on him. “I probably wanted to tell a story like this because I felt like I had so much work to do in terms of reconciling different things from my past and how they influenced me as a person,” Derrickson said and proceeded:
“The Black Phone is actually about childhood trauma essentially, and it is that aspect, what it feels like,” says Derrickson, which is what makes The Black Phone so great in helping them deal with this.
Of course, without the contribution of many talented people involved in it, this kind of catharsis would be merely personal instead of being an outstanding film. In a barely furnished cellar by himself Mason Thames’s portrayal as Finney steals the limelight. His stoic face notwithstanding, he perfectly encapsulates his transformation from cowardice to bravery; even if he has very little material to work with on set. Madeleine McGraw could be the best part about The Black Phone playing Gwen – a mix between precociousness and innocence that was both suffering and strength. Her scenes are either full of expletive prayers or fights with her dad.
Then there’s Ethan Hawke as The Grabber though. Much has been made about Hawke turning into villains for such characters recently – Moon Knight, Valerian: City Of A Thousand Planets and others – and deservedly so. He also happens to be an ace at acting (and scripting). It has been interesting watching someone like him get more menacing lately.’ Hawke feared playing bad guys confessing in Entertainment Weekly that ‘I’ve always believed that once you show the audience your demon inside them they never un-see it for life”. This doesn’t have to be true although one can’t complain about more Hawke villains.
This is because he’s excellent in this. For instance, Hawke hides behind different masks and detachable mask parts made by the great Tom Savini (who did makeup and special effects in films like Dawn of the Dead, Creepshow, Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2, Friday the 13th). But still you can see his face through the performance; it speaks a lot even with silence, it usually has a kind of grotesque beauty about it and sometimes seems childish and unstable. It would be somewhat presumptuous and perhaps unfair to call him at the peak of his game here given that he has had such an extensive career as a true artist yet he is close.
Hawke is the epitome of Derickson’s terror. “Horror enables a catharsis that can exorcise unspeakable or unspoken evils in our lives, our families, ourselves, strangers and nature and even throughout the world; that’s what horror is for; it is about facing and dealing with the scary truths of life.” As much as there may be think pieces on the arguably problematic conclusions The Black Phone comes to regarding violence and self-defense, this is a great film. This movie was marvelously directed, acted by experts and scripted à la intelligence therefore its title rings true.
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