Black phone : Ethan Hawke as a terrifying kidnapper
Released in 2022, Black phone marks the return of Scott Derrickson (Doctor Strange) to horror thriller, his favorite genre, after The Exorcism of Emily Rose, Left OR Deliver us from evil. Based on the short story of the same name by Joe Hill, the film begins in a small town in Colorado, late 1970s.
Black Phone: the terrifying Ethan Hawke in a morbid and disenchanted thriller
A city where teenage kidnappings are increasing and where young Finney (Mason Thames) suffers daily violence and harassment at school. One day, the boy is kidnapped by a man (Ethan Hawke) who takes him with him in his van. Locked in his captor’s cellar, Finney discovers a mysterious telephone hanging on the wall, whose threads were torn. The object allows the teenager to communicate with his tormentor’s previous victims, who will help him survive.
Scott Derrickson brought a personal dimension to this project, which relies on a sticky atmosphere and Ethan Hawke’s terrifying performance in the role black man. Conquered by Joe Hill’s story, the director decides to tell it by infusing it “the ultra-morbid atmosphere” in which he grew upas he confides in the press kit:
I lived in Denver in the late 1970s, in a tough neighborhood with maximum insecurity, violence, and abuse of all kinds. Besides, I was the youngest among all these young people adrift.
It was also the time that Ted Bundy passed through our house killing more than once. (…) I also found myself faced with the murder of the mother of a friend who lived near us.
I really lived in an ultra-morbid climate, not to mention the violent abuse against many young people by their parents. It was truly a dark time in my life. The fear was in me and in my family.
An assassin inspired by John Wayne Gacy
For his part, Joe Hill built the character of the kidnapper inspired by John Wayne Gacy. Nicknamed the “killer clown”, this American was convicted of torturing, raping and killing 33 victims. Married and the father of two, he became a clothing store manager, then manager of three KFC restaurants in the 1960s. As a volunteer he became “Pogo the Clown” and participated in birthday activities for hospitalized children in Las Vegas.
In 1968 he was sentenced to ten years in prison for sodomy, after being accused of attempted rape of several of his teenage employees. Released after 18 months of imprisonment and abandoned by his first wife, he returned to settle in Chicago with his mother. After remarrying in 1972, he founded a construction company. The same year he committed his first murder.
John Wayne Gacy was arrested by Chicago police in his car on December 21, 1978. During the investigation, 26 bodies of his victims were found under his Chicago home, with neighbors complaining of odors emanating from his basement. He is sentenced to death and he is executed May 10, 1994, at the age of 52. As did his father Stephen King That and the Pennywise character, Joe Hill, is therefore partly based on the “killer clown” to create the kidnapper of Black phone.
Source: Cine Serie
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