The Black Phone Review - Scott Derrickson Takes You Home With His Conformed Horror Thriller

Scott Derrickson's latest offering is a supernatural horror thriller, The Black Phone and it seems quite familiar with the surroundings of this tough genre. Scott came to direct this film after leaving a biggie like Doctor Strange In The Multiverse Of Madness (2022), and we shouldn't discuss how that much-hyped sequel failed to match the predecessor helmed by Derrickson himself. The Black Phone belongs to his natural genre, which is called "supernatural" by name (well, that's not a joke I think he should be putting in his next), making sure that he uses all his typical methods to make it work. And it does work! The Black Phone is an adaptation of the 2004 short story of the same name by Joe Hil and is written by Scott Derrickson and C. Robert Cargill. Set in the late 70s, the film is about Finney (Mason Thames), who gets kidnapped on one fine day. He becomes the sixth victim of the grabber (Ethan Hawke), who has previously abducted five children who have been missing. Finney uses a mysterious phone to communicate with his captor's previous victims while his sister, Gwen (Madeleine McGraw), experiences psychic dreams that might help her and the cops find the grabber. As mentioned earlier, it's a conformed story, complying with all the tricks — but in the right manner. Ethan Hawke will have you in moments of fear. That's where he wins you, despite the fact that he is not the solo lead here nor does he have a continuous presence in the film. Mason Thames and Madeleine McGraw are the two lead actors, and you should watch out for them because they are cute and confident. Thames holds an edge with all those important scenes, whereas McGraw goes away with a couple of damn funny one-liners. Jeremy Davies's father will fade away from memory before you reach home, but surprisingly, the rest of the cast is much better than expected. Every horror thriller has to be technically advanced, I believe, and The Black Phone is the one I'm talking about. Frédéric Thoraval's tight editing keeps you on the edge of your seats for 100 minutes, and in the meantime, the fast-paced shots and chilling background score startle you all of a sudden. I wish there were many scenes like that, so the film would have become a nightmare, but anyway, whatever is there is enough for a one-time viewing. A special mention goes to Brett Jutkiewicz's cinematography for showing the suburban town just how it should have been and the dark room just how one could imagine it normally. More than a director's film, The Black Phone is an editor's film. But I'm sure the director must have given his own input, or maybe he was the one to decide on the final cut. So, the credit should go to both. As a result, we have The Black Phone making a brilliant atmospheric experience that works better on the big-screen. Scott Derrickson takes care of the basics and some more advanced things as well. It's difficult to make supernatural thrillers nowadays that should look human-oriented, but this man has a safe formula of his own. He's done it before with The Exorcism of Emily Rose (2005), Sinister (2012), and Deliver Us From the Devil (2014), and he's doing it again with The Black Phone. It's only that we are moving ahead with the times, so most things look repetitive. Of course, one can't expect him to deliver groundbreaking horror films like James Whale did in the 1930s or even something astonishing like the modern supernatural thriller The Sixth Sense (1999), because the genre has evolved and changed over the years, and so has the audience. The Black Phone would have looked much better a decade ago, though. However, Derrickson does not fail to deliver what he promised, and that's enough. Overall, The Black Phone makes for a gripping horror thriller that can be enjoyed by die-hard fans and followers of the genre.