Growing up, one of the biggest scares thrown at people is getting abducted by someone in a van, who seems nice at the time, but ends up being either a child molester or a murderer, or worst, both. Typically, this would come in the form of a stranger saying that they had candy in their car, or the stranger saying that they have a puppy they want to show off, and then when the victim gets close enough, they get snatched, or in the case of The Black Phone, they get grabbed. Thus, the name of Ethan Hawke’s character, The Grabber. Not the most menacing of names, but one of the most menacing of actions, preying on children, and instead of luring children to his van with puppies, The Grabber pretended to be a magician, and with all good serial killer, he has a calling card that he leaves behind, black balloons, a symbol of joy that is darkened by its absence of color that now corresponds with the absence of the child.
The Grabber is preying upon a Denver suburb in the late 70s. He is specifically snatching up boys that are in the teenish category. He drives his big black van around, and waits for a kid to be left alone, and then he pulls up his van and goes through his scheme, and the finishing touch is a spray can of what can only be assumed to be chloroform, or something like it. Once they are captured, they are transported to The Grabber’s basement, where he starts to play his game. Many children had fallen victim to this creep, and the town was no closer to solving the crime, but then he abducts Finney, a nerdy kid, who gets picked on regularly, but he always gets back up. He also has an incredible sister, who always has his back, to the point where she takes a small boulder and bashes the head of one of the bullies in a fight, but she also has another power. Sometimes her dreams, are visions into reality, and her latest dreams involve The Grabber.
Another twist is thrown in as well. In the soundproof basement where Finney is kept, there is a phone attached to the wall, the cord is cut, but it still rings. When he answers, he hears the voices of the lost boys, and they try to help Finney survive the game and make sure that this does not happen to anyone else.
There is a huge absence of adults in this film, or at least of helpful adults that supervise children. Not only does this abductor get multiple children, there is also rampant violence among the children themselves, and in the case of Finney and Gwen, their dad is abusive. There are multiple gruesome brawls that occur. One is a one-on-one fight between two children, where after the victor explains the importance of bloodshed. There is the jumping of Finney, and the rock to the head that his sister delivers, and there is the fight in the store over pinball. All these fights come packed with blood and some gruesome sound effects, and an absence of adult intervention. The last fight is the only one that seems to have real word ramifications, the others go surprisingly unpunished.
These acts of violence do shine light on the importance of sticking together through trauma and abuse. This is specifically shown between Gwen and Finney. Their dad is a drunk, and their mother is dead, so they are left to take care of each other, and their ungrateful dad. The two of them are constantly walking on eggshells around their dad, because they are terrified that he will snap and start to relentlessly beat them with a belt. None worst than the scene where the dad is beating Gwen in the kitchen because the police visited him at work to ask about her, even though she was not even in trouble. Although fictional, it is still hard to watch, but the bond shown after between Finney and Gwen is important. Once the beating ends, Gwen scoots in close to Finney for comfort. (Spoilers) Then once Finney escapes from the house and all the violence, they scoot in close together, and their dad is at their feet. I do find it interesting that the dad’s choice of weapon was the belt, and also the Grabber had his belt that he held, as he waited atop the stairs for when the children would try to escape. I do not think it was a coincidence that the director had them both use a belt, it was a nod to the disgustingness of the act of physically abusing children, may it be the father or an abductor, it does not matter.
Ethan Hawke did do an excellent job as the antagonist, and it was not an easy performance to play. Most of the time that he is on the screen, he is behind a mask. The mask looks like it is made of hard plaster. It is white, and it can be taken into two pieces. The bottom is a very pointed chin with a sinister smile, and the top has hollow eyes with strong downward slanting angry eyebrows, with a massive forehead with a crevice in the middle, and two short horns atop to make a new age devil face. The mask works well, and this is a key component to a good horror villain. Obviously, there are the three famous masks of Michael Myers, Jason, and scream, which are also all white. The one in this film is by far the most sinister looking, but it also seems to give the person behind it more visibility, maybe that is just because the bottom slides off, or because this killer was more vocal whereas Michael and Jason are mute. Either way the performance given was creepy. The Graber tried to give off a happy persona, but you could feel the anger and instability bubbling underneath the surface. The mannerism that he had, also helped to make the performance more unsettling.
There was one big problem I had with the film and one small one. The big one first: the house that is being shown has a basement, and the basement is one big empty room, and there is a small offshoot where there is a toilet. All that is fine, but in one escape attempt, Finney uses the lid from the tank of the toilet to break through one of the walls, and on the other side of the wall is a freezer. There is literally no way that the lay out of the house would have another room there. Like it does not make sense. They show the house from the outside, and there is no place for there to be another subterranean entrance, and when the police are searching the house, they never go into some underground room with a fridge. The lesser problem comes form the scenes with Robin and Finney. They are just very awkward, and there is supposed to be some friendship connection there, but their chemistry is just a miss for me, and the scene where they are practicing using the phone as a weapon was too cheesy and unnecessary.
Scott Derrickson was the director of the film, and he was also the director of Sinister, which is one of the scarier movies I have seen. This movie does not quite live up to the scary standard of Sinister, but it does have its moments. There are multiple jump scares that made the other people in the theater audibly jump and yell. The music also makes you feel uneasy at times. Derrickson also intersperses the movie with grainy footage that gives the movie more of a classic feel to it, and it is also something that he did in Sinister as well. It adds to the atmosphere, another thing he did to create the atmosphere is dull the colors. For the most part the colors in the film lacked saturation, and the weather always seemed to be overcast or raining, creating an overbearing feeling of dread.
This was a good movie, it had some strong moments to it, and the one hundred minutes went by quickly. It was engaging for almost the whole time which is impressive considering The Grabber was not really introduced until thirty minutes into film. I enjoyed the jump scares, and it used a grounded scary premise, and it extrapolated upon it by adding a small amount of paranormal to it, but they did not over do it. I would recommend going to see it. It did open against the Elvis movie, which is over two and a half hours, and is supposed to be good, but this was way more up my alley, so here is my bias on full display. I give this movie three stars, but it was very close to 3.5 stars, so it is well worth the view!
Other Movies This Week:
The Worst Person in the World: This is finally streaming somewhere. It was a foreign film, and it was amazing. It came out in 2021, and I would have it as the second-best film of the year. It is streaming on Hulu. It is part love story, but it is more about the crises that we all face in life.
Elvis: Long but compressed, it tried to cover too much time, so not enough of his life was fleshed out. Visually pretty. I also hated Tom Hanks in this, it might have just been that his character was hateable, or maybe it was just his performance...
The Ledge: If someone took Free Solo, and they decided to turn it into the worst movie ever. The characters in this are so bad, specifically the guys, and their choices are beyond idiotic, but watching rock climbing is always fun.
Titane: It is hard to use words to describe this insane film, it must be watched to be believed. Truly an unparalleled plot if there ever was one.
New Rankings:
The Black Phone: 3 Stars
Elvis: 3 Stars
The Worst Person in the World: 4.5 Stars
The Ledge: 1.5 Stars
Titane: 3.5 Stars
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