Review Tuesday: The Black Phone (2021)

The Black Phone

(2021)

A neighborhood is gripped in fear as a degenerate is abducting and murdering children.

We had been avoiding this movie from the start. Movies with children as heroes don't appeal to me. However, a friend gave it high marks so we gave it a view.

 

The movie is, mainly, from the perspectives of, brother and sister, Finney (Mason Thames) and Gwen (Madeleine McGraw), children living in a town in hysteria over children going missing, and when they do show up again, they are dead. Despite the town being hyper-vigilant over this situation, The Grabber (Ethan Hawke) continued his brazen abductions in broad daylight. 

 

Until he grabbed Finney. 

 

This is when the story goes wacky. Gwen had the ability to see visions. She could see bits and pieces of the crime scenes but not enough to be of much help to the Police. Additionally, her father (Jeremy Davies) VIOLENTLY discouraged her use of those abilities. As you would expect, Finney got abducted and the movie is about his experience. Either he had some psychic ability, like his sister, that allowed him to speak with the dead, or the ghosts of the previous victims were instructing him, calling on a disconnected BLACK PHONE in the room. 

 

Ethan Hawke does amazing job being a violent, child-abusing/murdering, psychopath. The cinematography is excellent. The adult characters are generally excellent. It's just the whole thing about the prior victims giving Finney a stream of information that would allow him to overcome his abductor and save his life grew pretty tiresome. After a while, and this is a pretty long film for horror, we just didn't care. Between the character of Gwen, appearing to be under ten years old, yet having a dirtier mouth than truck driver and the wimpy Finney being able to over-power his tormentor, it was just beyond that point of suspending belief to get into a film. I would call this movie MEH.   

  

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