‘The Black Phone’
The Black Phone was a surprise hit at the box office when it was released in the spring of 2022, raking in an unexpected $115 million globally and marking yet another low budget, high return hit for the Blumhouse shingle. Adapting a short story from Joe Hill, writer/director Scott Derrickson reunites with his Sinister lead Ethan Hawke for a moody, slightly supernatural take on the child abduction subgenre of horror movies. Set in the Denver suburbs in the late ’70s, a serial kidnapper nicknamed “The Grabber” has the town on edge, especially the troubled tween Finney (the exceptional child actor Mason Thames), who is struggling with the death of his mother, trying to survive life with his abusive, alcoholic father (Jeremy Davies), and constantly on the the receiving end of beatdowns from school bullies. It’s not exactly to spoiler to say that Finney ultimately finds himself in the clutches of The Grabber, but where the film goes from there is one of the most tense moviewatching experiences in recent years.