IMDb plot summary: After being abducted by a child killer and locked in a soundproof basement, a 13-year-old boy starts receiving calls on a disconnected phone from the killer's previous victims.
Directed by Scott Derrickson. Starring Mason Thames, Madeleine McGraw, and Ethan Hawke.
The Black Phone is a horror movie based on a short story by Joe Hill. It's set in a town where children are going missing, and one day our protagonist goes missing as well. We follow him trying to escape his captor with the help of the previously missing children, who are communicating with him from beyond the grave via the titular black phone. It's an interesting conceit, and I appreciate how the film keeps so much of the mystery intact. We never really know how this works or why the killer is doing what he's doing. It stays in murky uncertainty, which makes it much more interesting than if we got a big old back story. It sets up a good creepy atmosphere that works even as the film *feels* like a short story -- somewhat incomplete, though it's hard to pinpoint exactly what is missing here. It's not a stellar horror film but it does its job pretty well and is a fun little diversion as far as horror movies go, even if it doesn't always hang together.
How it entered my Flickchart:
The Black Phone > Beauty and the Beast (1946)
The Black Phone < La La Land
The Black Phone < Lagaan: Once Upon a Time in India
The Black Phone > The Texas Chain Saw Massacre
The Black Phone > Five Graves to Cairo
The Black Phone > Island of Lost Souls
The Black Phone > Event Horizon
The Black Phone < Charlie St. Cloud
The Black Phone > I Saw the Devil
The Black Phone < Hereditary
The Black Phone < Timecop
The Black Phone < It's a Gift
Final spot: #1399 out of 3676, or 62%.
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