The Black Phone Review Empire Issue Preview: The Gray Man, Obi-Wan Kenobi, Thor: Love And Thunder, The Black Phone, Ms. Marvel Ethan Hawke is a kidnapper in the new The Black Phone Trailer Commentary Scott Derrickson and Tom Savini created The Black Phone’s Iconic Horror Mask – Exclusive Image Black Phone Trailer Breakdown: Scott Derrickson talks about Ethan Hawke, Iconic Masks and Joe Hill adaptation Ethan Hawke is a terrifying boy hunter in Scott Derrickson Phone’s black trailer

Where do you go when you are lost? If you can, find your way back. In many ways, this is the path that director Scott Derrickson has chosen. After leaving Marvel Doctor Strange in the multiverse of madness (possibly via a bright orange portal) during pre-production, after successfully launching the character on screen in 2016 strange doctorthe director is back now, well, Complaint territory with that, his return from terror. There are ultra dark themes. Ethan Hawke in a major role. Regular co-writer C. Robert Cargill returns to writing. Jason Blum as a producer. Scott Derrickson has returned home.

After his foray into multi-million dollar success territory, the black phone it is not so much a step backwards for the director as it is a film about what home really is; in Derrickson’s education; in the strengths (and friendships) that shape us into who we are. The perfect prism for exploring these ideas is Joe Hill’s account from his 2005 book Ghosts of the 20th century collected, resulting in an adaptation whose dark premises and personal demons come together in a surprisingly warm, hopeful and, yes, terrifying film.

Derrickson talked a lot about his childhood in relation to the black phone, having grown up in a 1970s Denver neighborhood plagued by violence. It was a time not only of parental physical discipline and bloody child-to-child beatings, but also a time when the specter of Ted Bundy (who had committed several murders in Colorado at the time) loomed. All these forces are whirling the black phoneThe central figure of Finney, superbly played by Mason Thames in his big screen debut. He’s a near-teenager who grew up in ramshackle 1970s Denver, where his alcoholic father regularly wields his belt as a whipping tool, thugs wait on quiet street corners to ambush him, and urban boy-hunter legend “The Grabber “adds an -present kidnapping threat. Even before being held captive in The Grabber’s basement, Finney lives in the shadow of danger.

Derrickson’s film spends a reasonable amount of time in the outside world before trapping its central character within concrete walls, evoking time and place with a linklaterian ability to turn memories into cinematic scenes. In the soundtrack comes the rock of the seventies (Free Ride by Edgar Winter can only evoke disoriented and confused), bottle rockets are fired and children brag in the bathrooms that they have seen The Texas chainsaw massacre. It’s all fondly remembered, but that warmth comes alongside the ever-present threat of physical and emotional torment and the stories of children disappearing with black balloons left onstage. Derrickson skillfully evokes both nostalgia and evil, without canceling the other.

Once The Grabber gets Finney into his black truck, the film focuses on its central assumption: that the killer ‘s former victims can talk to the boy from beyond the grave via an unplugged landline phone plugged into the wall from the basement. this is where the black phone sounds like the darkest possible iteration of an Amblin movie (yes, darker than THIS IS), as the ghost children call to help Finney escape a similar fate. Hawke, in a rare evil role (although his second this year, laterknight of the moon), offers a terrifying and fascinating physical performance, as her face is masked for most of the film, it is her presence (sometimes authoritative, sometimes playful, always disturbing) and her vocal work that impress the most. She swaps the top and bottom of her mask for devil horns like it’s some fucking psychological exercise: frowns that look more like grunts or dripping meanness. man laughing sometimes he smiles, completely exposes his eyes or mouth. Hawke becomes one with these masks, perfectly modeled on the contours of his face. It’s hard to look away.

the black phoneThe efficient frightened jolts and jumps should placate the summer crowds in search of a downright scary, but it is the fear that is most palpable: the specter of violence expected from relapses, both in Finney’s attempts to escape from the basement of The Grabber, both in anticipating his father’s wrath. And the salvation of all that is communion; lingering ghosts of other children, or Finney’s psychic sister Gwen (also the excellent Madeleine McGraw), who dreams in Super 8 and delivers perhaps the best movie line of 2022: “Jesus: what the hell ?!”

Though there are occasional errors of tone, James Ransone’s short supporting character Max, who conducts his own investigation of Grabber, feels out of place. the black phone it manages to be a conventional genre film that also feels deeply personal and passionate. It’s horror, delivered with a sizable heart. Welcome home, Scott.