Scott Derrickson’s “Black Phone,” which is more emotional than horrifying, is less horror than an adult-style ghost story. Instead of spitting Gore and exploding fear, this fun adaptation of Joe Hill’s 2005 short story has an almost meditative tone.
But the small number of goosebumps in the movie is far from ruin. Set in a small town in Colorado in the 1970s, the story is about 13-year-old Finney (Mason Thames), a dead mother, a school bully, and an abusive alcoholic father (Jeremy Davies) playing ace baseball. Focus on pitchers. In an early lecture on a counterattack from a new friend (charismatic Miguel Casares Mora), Finney kidnaps Grabber (Ethan Hawke)’s latest victims, a ruthless wizard, and a few neighborhood boys. There is a foresight when you become a person.
While shedding light on horror and shortening the details (The Grabber is a common, somewhat comical villain with unexplored psychopathology), “The Black Phone” is more successful as a celebration of youthful resilience. doing. When Finney is suffering from a soundproof cement dungeon, his energetic sister, Gwen (Madeleine Maglow, outstanding), finds him using the spiritual gift she inherited from her mother. Finney also, with the help of the former victims of the murderer, called him with an ancient rotary phone on the wall above the bed.
Rethinking his own childhood and adolescent elements, Derrickson (who wrote the script with C. Robert Cargill) reminds us of when Ted Bundy was in the news and “The Texas ChainSaw Massacre” was driving in. .. The image of the movie has a mellow, antique glaze that relieves fear and enhances the nostalgic mood. (For example, compare with Finney’s kidnapping Georgie’s kidnapping in 2017 chiller “It”: Both have balloons and masked monsters, but only one is scary. It doesn’t help that Hawk is stuck in a character whose torture repertoire consists primarily of elaborate hand gestures.
Greatly obsessed with Hill’s father Stephen King’s obsession with the well-known story — lucky kids, reckless parents, spooky clowns and their accessories — the “Black Phone” is inevitably a derivative. I feel that. But young actors are fascinating, the setting is lovingly imagined, and adolescent anxiety is frontal and central. For most of us, those worries were more than enough to remind us of the tremors.
Black phone
It was rated R for its bloody appearance and blasphemous words. Execution time: 1 hour 42 minutes. At the theater.
