I promised myself I would not be too harsh on the new Ethan Hawke movie, but then I went ahead and titled this post The Good, The Bad, and The Black Phone (2022) so, you know, mission automatically failed, I guess. My intentions are not to hurt anyone’s feelings, or to be negative or whatever, but to be one of the voices who are honest and simply want to warn those undecided horror fans to save their money and skip the movie altogether, or, if they are still curious about it, to at least wait until it becomes a streamer and even then I would caution them to fast-forward all the way to the very last five minutes –The Black Phone was not worth my time and money, and doubt it would be worth yours either.
A couple of trivia items before we start: The script for this 1h 43m movie was based on a 30-page short story written by Stephen King’s son where a boy is kidnapped and kept in a basement with a disconnected phone which receives supernatural calls from past victims, all dead of course. [By the way, a 30-page short story not does a full-length movie make, just saying.] The movie was directed by the same guy who directed Sinister (2012) which is one of my favorite movies from the 2010’s. [This last part not a trivia piece but a personal fact, obviously.] In Sinister, Hawke played one of the main characters too, ditto for deputy so&so.
**SPOILERS AHEAD**
Let’s begin on a positive note and talk about the good, that is, the boy’s father and sister. Those two characters were so complex and rich that every time they were onscreen they left me wanting more. On one hand we had the tormented alcoholic dad who spends his nights drinking himself to death, angry at the world, taking it out on his daughter for showing the same “special gifts” her late wife had, and on the other hand we had the smart and brave girl who is not afraid to fight back when protecting her shy big brother, but who is yet too little to stand up to her abusive father when being physically punished for embracing her “visions/dreams.” Bonus points: She was funny in a sort of adorable way, so that aspect of her personality balanced out all the hitting and crying.
Before moving into the bad, or more specifically, the meh of the film, I would like to say that I always (always!) try my very best at being unbiased toward child actors in horror movies. Having said that, watching a child actor pretend to be in a dangerous situation in a horror movie, like fighting against a serial killer, let alone being successful at outsmarting said serial killer, takes me out of the moment and I have to bring myself back into this hour-and-a-half-long fantasy world. I do try my best though, but by doing so it feels like work, I don’t know, I am rambling now. So yeah, child actors, yada, yada, yada, not believable enough, not gory enough, not scary enough, so on and so forth.
The ugly aspect of the film, the nail in the coffin, the drop that spilled the glass, the straw that broke the camel’s back—you know where I am trying to go with this—was the fact that The Black Phone underutilized the great artistic abilities of accomplished actor Ethan Hawke. It was a total joke! The only moment where we saw his full face, excuse me, his full face covered in white makeup and wearing big 70’s glasses (the movie was set in the late 70’s, did I already say that?), was during the kidnapping scene, and everything after that was him wearing the oversized Bughuul-like masks—another hint to Sinister, in my personal opinion, that is already on top of the super 8 film montage and the law enforcement/paranormal combo—that either covered his full face, or just the top, or just the bottom, and that was even if they showed the character at all –Hawke appeared so little in the film! A total joke indeed.
Listen, I can ignore the fact that Hawke’s lukewarm serial killer character, The Grabber, got tricked and killed by the main boy (I can deal with disappointment, no problem, easy, piece of cake), but what I cannot ignore is the fact that the film producers cast deputy so&so from Sinister to be his dumb drug addict brother, I mean, he was completely unnecessary to the story and low-key embarrassing to watch, and yes, of course he also died in the end without making an impact on anyone or anything (I cannot deal with movie makers underestimating their audience and giving them shit stories because they think it’s cute).
Final thoughts? The Black Phone was slow and repetitive and a letdown. The only thing I believe would save it so Blumhouse can continue making money from our ticket purchases (come on, you and I know this is a paycheck for everyone), would be to produce a prequel so they finally explain the reason behind the goofy masks and why The Grabber was who he was. Usually, serial killers, the real kind at least, have the most disturbing childhood stories and there is a robust market for that content nowadays (come on, you and I know we eat that stuff #numnum).
In Love and Fear,
-Marath
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