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‘The Black Phone’ Review: The Dead Have Your Number

Ethan Hawke plays the big bad in this 1970s-set child-abduction thriller.

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By Jeannette Catsoulis

More touching than terrifying, Scott Derrickson’s “Black Phone” is less a horror movie than a coming-of-age ghost story. In place of gouting gore and surging fright, this enjoyable adaptation of Joe Hill’s 2005 short story has an almost contemplative tone, one that drains its familiar horror tropes — a masked psychopath, communications from beyond the grave — of much of their chill.

The movie’s low goose bump count, though, is far from ruinous. Set in small-town Colorado in the 1970s, the story centers on 13-year-old Finney (Mason Thames), an ace baseball pitcher burdened by a dead mother, school bullies and an abusive, alcoholic father (Jeremy Davies). An early lecture from a new friend (a charismatic Miguel Cazarez Mora) about fighting back will prove prescient when Finney becomes the latest victim of The Grabber (Ethan Hawke), a clownish magician and the abductor of several neighborhood boys.

While light on scares and short on specifics (The Grabber is a generic, somewhat comic villain with an unexplored psychopathology), “The Black Phone” is more successful as a celebration of youthful resilience. As Finney languishes in a soundproofed cement dungeon, his spunky little sister, Gwen (Madeleine McGraw, a standout), is using the psychic gifts she inherited from her mother to find him. Finney also has help from the killer’s previous victims, who call him on the ancient rotary phone on the wall above his bed, undeterred by the fact that it has long been disconnected.

Revisiting elements of his own childhood and adolescence, Derrickson (who wrote the screenplay with C. Robert Cargill) evokes a time when Ted Bundy was on the news and “The Texas Chain Saw Massacre” was at the drive-in. The movie’s images have a mellow, antique glaze that strengthens the nostalgic mood while softening the dread. (Compare, for instance, Finney’s kidnapping with Georgie’s abduction in the 2017 chiller “It” : both feature balloons and a masked monster, but only one is terrifying.) It doesn’t help that Hawke is stranded in a character whose torture repertoire consists mainly of elaborate hand gestures.

Leaning heavily into the familiar narrative obsessions of Hill’s father, Stephen King — plucky kids, feckless parents, creepy clowns and their accessories — “The Black Phone” feels unavoidably derivative. But the young actors are appealing, the setting is fondly imagined and the anxieties of adolescence are front and center. For most of us, those worries were more than enough to conjure the shivers.

The Black Phone Rated R for bloody apparitions and blasphemous words. Running time: 1 hour 42 minutes. In theaters.

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The Black Phone Reviews

Based on Joe Hill’s book of the same name, the creators provide one of the most memorable contemporary horrors, discussing loss, domestic violence, supernatural, and much more.

Full Review | Original Score: A | Apr 10, 2024

It's not groundbreaking, but it's very well done.

Full Review | Jan 18, 2024

Here’s one of those supernatural thrillers that would actually be better off without the supernatural elements.

Full Review | Original Score: 2.5/4 | Oct 14, 2023

Derrickson has succeeded in making a film that is definitely worth any horror fan's time. Is it a new classic? No, but by hell, it is one fun ride.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | Jul 31, 2023

The Black Phone carries a horror premise with a supernatural touch full of potential, but it plays too safe by betting on a narrative that's too simple, predictable, and repetitive.

Full Review | Original Score: C+ | Jul 25, 2023

A New Horror Icon lives

Full Review | Jul 25, 2023

Ethan Hawke attempts to scare in a straightforward serial killer nightmare that is about as satisfying as a one-minute payphone call.

Full Review | Original Score: 2/5 | Jul 21, 2023

Derrickson is comfortable navigating dark and demented worlds, so it's frustrating when "The Black Phone" doesn't come together in a successful way.

Full Review | Original Score: 2/4 | Jul 16, 2023

Derrickson prioritizes jump-scares and sustaining a disquieting mood over the lives of these kids. He loses himself in the technique when the real nightmare is staring him right in the face.

Full Review | May 30, 2023

These additions significantly alter the tone of the original story for better or worse depending on what kind of horror movie you’re looking for.

Full Review | Original Score: B- | Feb 18, 2023

It’s a B-movie abduction flick centered in the 80s that values simplicity over complexity. And ultimately, The Black Phone is a theatrical experience that is sure to get your blood pumping.

Full Review | Original Score: B- | Feb 10, 2023

Scott Derrickson's return to his horror sandbox, The Black Phone, is a fantastic vintage horror film that utilizes sound against its audience.

Full Review | Jan 9, 2023

Ethan Hawke continues his spectacular mid-career run in a rare villainous role.

Full Review | Jan 3, 2023

The Black Phone is easily one of the best horror/trillers this year. The young cast members Mason Thames and Madeleine McGraw light up ever scene they are in & then Ethan Hawke becomes something horrifically unknown and yet interesting. A MUST WATCH FILM!

Full Review | Original Score: 10/10 | Dec 26, 2022

a good ole fashioned scary night out at the movies filled with dead kids, creepy masks, and haunting 8mm film.

Full Review | Original Score: 7/10 | Nov 2, 2022

It is as much ‘coming of age’ as ‘run from the monster’, and that is very much to its credit.

Full Review | Original Score: 8/10 | Oct 17, 2022

The Black Phone is a solid, classical horror flick by a team who love the genre and excel at their craft — what more could you ask for?

Full Review | Sep 29, 2022

In theory, the concept of The Black Phone is unique and interesting.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | Aug 22, 2022

The Black Phone is grounded in realism for a large part of the story & has just a cinch of fictional horror that truly allows the audience to become immersed in the story, which is elevated by good performances & unique creativity within the narrative.

Full Review | Original Score: A- | Aug 21, 2022

The Black Phone delivers one of the best stories and some of the best characters that I have seen all year. Ethan Hawke's performance as The Grabber paired with Derrickson's directing of Cargill's script are a match made in hell.

Full Review | Original Score: 4.25/5 | Aug 19, 2022

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There’s a Better Story The Black Phone Wishes It Could Tell

I haven’t read the Joe Hill short story that The Black Phone is based on, but watching the movie, it’s not hard to imagine what the source material must be like. In some ways, Scott Derrickson’s film still feels like a short story. It’s all setup and resolution, with little of the incident and complication that usually helps a feature-length movie come fully to life. In industry parlance, it feels like it’s missing a second act. But thanks to a host of excellent performances (and a few generic but effective scares), most viewers may not mind.

The film takes place in the year 1974; The Texas Chain Saw Massacre is in theaters, bandannas are in fashion, and the kung-fu craze is in full swing. In the suburbs of north Denver, however, a mysterious figure known as the Grabber is kidnapping teenage boys off the street. These disappearances have understandably invaded the fearful waking thoughts of local teen Finney Shaw (Mason Thames), even though he also has more immediate concerns on his mind — namely, a trio of savage bullies at school and an abusive father (Jeremy Davies, sporting an impressive pompadour and beard combo).

The deeply unstable Mr. Shaw terrorizes both the shy Finn and his headstrong little sister Gwen (Madeleine McGraw), but there is more to this family than meets the eye. Gwen is having dreams that feature specific details about the Grabber’s crimes that have not yet been made public, and the kids’ late mother apparently also had such premonitions and visions. Their alcoholic father is terrified at what might happen if his kids follow in the path of their mom, who we learn killed herself thanks to the voices and visions in her head. When Finn himself gets kidnapped, Gwen swings into action, desperately probing her dreams and breaking out a gauntlet of religious items (like some of Derrickson’s other films, The Black Phone has its share of Christian imagery) for clues to her beloved brother’s whereabouts.

Finn has been imprisoned in a large, dark basement by a masked, reedy-voiced psycho (Ethan Hawke, impressively unsettling in a role that almost never lets us see his whole face). The Grabber insists he will not hurt the child, but we know that he intends to do exactly that. Much of the film involves watching Finn scrape around this basement, and it’s to the 14-year-old Thames’s credit that his character’s predicament never feels repetitive or overtly downbeat. He brings a welcome mix of intelligence, bewilderment, and fear to the part — a complexity rare in young actors.

The Grabber’s basement is empty, save for a black phone that we’re told doesn’t work. Of course, as soon as the captor goes back upstairs, the phone rings. (The movie is, after all, called The Black Phone .) And yes, there is a voice on the other end of the line …

If you don’t want to know anything more about The Black Phone , you should probably stop reading at this point, although some of the following happens early enough that it feels more like part of the setup than an actual plot reveal. Either way, it’s hard to discuss the picture’s key weaknesses and strengths without addressing where it goes. Anyway, spoilers follow.

… The voices on the phone belong to the boys the Grabber has already killed. Finn can presumably hear them because his family is touched by a divine power. The boys are calling from some sort of afterlife, and even though their memories are slowly drifting away, they are able to guide Finn through his predicament — some of it via specific bits of advice, some of it via gnomic, Signs -like clues. Derrickson also uses these phone conversations to stage a number of jump scares which feel somewhat tacked on. These jolts are Finn’s own visions, it seems, but they’re never quite explained within the logic of this world — almost as if the filmmakers came up with them after realizing that mere phone conversations with ghosts wouldn’t provide the requisite genre thrills.

The movie is confused in conception, which is a shame because there’s potential here. The premise is genuinely creepy, and the conceit of phone calls from the afterlife is rife with possibility. When the dead boys first begin to speak, we get a couple of touching flashbacks to their lives, and it feels like the picture might be headed in a more emotional direction. That’s not the only promising idea that’s abandoned. The always-interesting James Ransone shows up as a weird, coked-up amateur sleuth who looks like he’s about to take the movie in a whole other direction — but his presence, sadly, is relatively short-lived and pointless, not quite enough to even count as a red herring. In most other horror movies, this might be a minor narrative nuisance, but The Black Phone at times feels so undernourished dramatically that these dropped subplots feel like missed opportunities.

Even Gwen’s search for Finn, to which the film cuts at opportune moments, is never as filled out as we might like. What makes it work, however, is 13-year-old McGraw’s electrifying performance as the little girl. It would have been easy to play this precocious, strong-willed child as a cutesy, foul-mouthed kid detective, but her concern for her brother shines through. Whenever Gwen is onscreen, the film locks into its more emotional register: We feel her anguish, her growing sense of helplessness.

So much so that the film loses some of its power whenever it cuts away from her. But it has to cut away, because Finn’s dramatic thread is where we get all the jump scares and the creepy imagery and the predictable escape-room theatrics. This tension between the sister’s narrative and the brother’s seems indicative of the rift at the heart of this picture. All throughout, The Black Phone feels like it’s trying to reconcile typical horror elements with the more expressive and tender story Derrickson clearly wants to tell. The reconciliation never really comes, but the cast gets us there anyway.

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The Black Phone review: Ethan Hawke rings in the nightmares in unnerving horror throwback

Doctor Strange director Scott Derrickson follows the landline to 1970s terror.

Leah Greenblatt is the critic at large at Entertainment Weekly , covering movies, music, books, and theater. She is a member of the New York Film Critics Circle, and has been writing for EW since 2004.

The call is coming from inside the house. The twist and the gist of The Black Phone is that those calls are actually good news for the boy trapped in a madman's basement — and maybe his best chance to survive director Scott Derrickson 's blunt but brutally effective little slice of supernatural horror, in theaters today.

Phone relies on landlines and several other throwback tropes because it can: The movie opens, not too unlike Dazed and Confused , on a small-town Little League game, Edgar Winters' "Free Ride" choogling on the soundtrack. It's the early 1970s, and kids in stiff-denimed bell bottoms and stripey knitwear know only an analog world of shag-rug living rooms, suburban bike rides, and benign neglect. (Helicopter parenting, clearly, is a concept still several decades away.)

Finney (Mason Thames) and Gwen (Madeleine McGraw) have more latitude than most, largely because their mother is dead and their dad ( Justified 's Jeremy Davies ) is a dedicated low-grade alcoholic. But they also have to reckon with his erratic moods and tantrums; when Finney's chewing makes too much noise or Gwen dares to mention the strange premonitions in her dreams, they might be met by seething outbursts or worse, the belt.

Finney also has to contend with crushes and school bullies, though the biggest bogeyman is someone his classmates just call "The Grabber"; Missing posters flutter on telephone poles and in shop windows for all the boys he's said to have stolen away. When the man in the black van finally comes, it happens in a moment: A strange, giggling figure ( Ethan Hawke , his face daubed in chalky white stage paint like a degenerate mime), grabs Finney and shoves him in before he has a chance to scream.

Once Derrickson ( Doctor Strange , Sinister ) gets Finney in the basement, more paranormal aspects take over (when the old disconnected phone on the wall rings, it's coming from a place no long-distance plan can reach) though Hawke's mere malevolent presence is often the freakiest thing on screen. His nose and mouth concealed by a series of leering, lumpen masks and his motives unclear, the actor swings between breezy benevolence and sputtering rage; there's a game he wants to play, except the rules aren't written anywhere.

Derrickson penned the script with his Doctor Strange cowriter C. Robert Cargill from a short story by Joe Hill , and the slim source material tends to feel padded out accordingly. Basic plot mechanics often don't add up in the details, but high-voltage jump scares abound, and several baroquely composed frames (a goat-horned Hawke stripped to the waist with a whip in his wand, waiting patiently in a kitchen chair; a scattering of black balloons across the sky) are genuine nightmare fodder. Thames, with his fox face and watchful eyes, feels more like a real kid than Hollywood usually allows, and even as goofier gaps begin to appear in the storyline, his MacGyver-like resourcefulness give the movie a witty, furious kick: Home Alone for the Blumhouse crowd. Grade: B

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The black phone, common sense media reviewers.

Violent but effective horror tale about kidnapped teens.

A Lot or a Little?

What you will—and won't—find in this movie.

The themes here are rather dark; even the idea of

Some of the supporting characters are admirable. T

Positive portrayals of Asian and Latino teens, but

Young girl brutally whipped by father with a belt;

Multiple uses of "f--k," "c---sucker," "motherf---

1970s-era Lemon Sprite served to main character.

Secondary character appears to have a drinking pro

Positive Messages

The themes here are rather dark; even the idea of "learn to stand up for yourself" inevitably involves violence. It's a violent world, and the only way to handle it is to be more violent than others. The movie ends in a way that suggests that things have been made better through violence.

Positive Role Models

Some of the supporting characters are admirable. Teen ballplayer Bruce projects kindness and confidence, and Robin is strong and smart -- she gets into fights but follows a method and protects the weaker kids. Although the killer gets them both, their short time onscreen feels fairly positive. Gwen also has notable qualities -- she's extremely strong-willed and always does what she thinks is right, regardless of the consequences.

Diverse Representations

Positive portrayals of Asian and Latino teens, but both are supporting characters and are killed by the villain. Someone calls the Latino character a "beaner." Other actors of color appear in smaller roles, i.e. one of a pair of police detectives and a high school principal. Gwen is a powerful, smart teen girl.

Did we miss something on diversity? Suggest an update.

Violence & Scariness

Young girl brutally whipped by father with a belt; she screams and sobs. Brutal fights involving bullying: punching, kicking, slamming, martial arts. Teen hit in head with rock, leading to a wound gushing blood. Young girl punched in face, bleeding mouth. Teen punched in face over and over until face covered in blood. Switchblade, carving flesh. Teen kidnapped, kicking, fighting; he's sprayed in eyes and mouth with something from a spray can. Teen tackled, knife held to throat. Teen punched hard, knocked cold. Teens murdered offscreen. Teens in peril. Character punched with blunt object over and over again. Character's head sliced open with axe; blood spurts. Person strangled. Bandaging bloody knuckles. Broken ankle. Sliced-open arm. Jump-scares. Ghostly images. Fall from window.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Violence & Scariness in your kid's entertainment guide.

Multiple uses of "f--k," "c---sucker," "motherf----r," "s--t," "dips--t," "c--t," "a--hole," "a--face," "son of a bitch," "hell," "damn," "d--kweed," "puta," "f-g," "beaner," "jerkface," "fartknocker," "dumb." Middle-finger gesture. "Holy Mary, Mother of God."

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Language in your kid's entertainment guide.

Products & Purchases

Drinking, drugs & smoking.

Secondary character appears to have a drinking problem; passes out drunk in the evenings, with empty bottles all over house. Supporting character sniffs cocaine. Brief social drinking at ballgame.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Drinking, Drugs & Smoking in your kid's entertainment guide.

Parents Need to Know

Parents need to know that The Black Phone is a horror movie about a kidnapped teen ( Mason Thames ) who gets supernatural help while trying to escape from his maniacal kidnapper. It's a solid, visceral thriller, albeit one that's full of peril and violence involving young teens. There are scenes of brutal, bloody bullying, including bashing a head with a rock, use of a switchblade, punching, kicking, martial arts, and face-punching. Adults also attack kids: There's a whipping with a belt, a teen boy being abducted (and something sprayed in his face), and a teen getting tackled, being threatened with a knife, and knocked him unconscious. Teens are murdered offscreen. There are also jump-scares and some spooky stuff. Frequent strong language includes "f--k," "c---sucker," "s--t," "c--t," "a--hole," and more. A secondary character appears to have an alcohol dependency, passing out in his chair and leaving bottles everywhere. To stay in the loop on more movies like this, you can sign up for weekly Family Movie Night emails .

Where to Watch

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Community Reviews

Parents say (26)
Kids say (79)

Based on 26 parent reviews

Dark and intense thriller following a kidnapped teen is violent and heavy on the language

When your dialog sucks, add cuss words..., what's the story.

In THE BLACK PHONE, it's 1978 in Denver. Local boys have been disappearing, never to be found. Thirteen-year-old Finney ( Mason Thames ) is frequently bullied at school, even though his firecracker younger sister Gwen ( Madeleine McGraw ) sticks up for him. Gwen has clairvoyant powers and sometimes dreams about "The Grabber" ( Ethan Hawke ), who kidnaps the boys and leaves behind black balloons. Meanwhile, Finney befriends tough, smart Robin (Miguel Cazarez Mora) and is given a brief reprieve from those who target him. Unfortunately, Robin also disappears, soon followed by Finney himself. Trapped in a concrete room, Finney starts getting mysterious calls on a broken black phone. With help from the voices on the other line and his sister's dreams, Finney begins to attempt his escape.

Is It Any Good?

This tense horror movie seems a little tentative about how far to go with its subject of child kidnapping/murder, but it still delivers genuinely brutal tension via its vivid characters. Based on a short story by Stephen King's son Joe Hill ( Horns , NOS4A2 , Locke & Key ), The Black Phone takes its time before putting Finney in the concrete room, trying to humanize the victims as much as possible. Director Scott Derrickson seems to want viewers to feel the impact of death, but not too strongly. The movie frequently retreats into humor; a scene with a hyped-up, paranoid James Ransone is a hoot, and McGraw -- who plays young Gwennie -- amuses with her colorful insults.

Another small issue is Finn himself. He's introduced as a brilliant baseball pitcher, staring down batters with a fearsome glare before throwing perfect strikes. Given that context, it makes little sense for him to be so meek and passive later. As a result, The Black Phone can feel somewhat shapeless. But once Finn is in the room, his interactions with a scenery-chewing Hawke, as well as the voices on the phone, start to build into something worth watching. Derrickson offers up a couple of spine-tingling moments, as well as suspenseful races-against-time that will make viewers' palms slick with cold sweat. The final moments are savage in their violence, but it's also cathartic and primal. All in all, this one's worth picking up.

Talk to Your Kids About ...

Families can talk about The Black Phone 's violence . How did it make you feel? Was it exciting? Shocking? What did the movie show or not show to achieve this effect? Why is that important?

Is the movie scary ? What's the appeal of horror movies? Why do people sometimes like to be scared?

How far should a movie go in depicting bullying and teen violence? Did this one go too far? Could it have gone farther?

How relevant is the movie's message that "you need to learn to stand up for yourself"? Does that lesson/skill need to include violence? Why, or why not?

Movie Details

In theaters : June 24, 2022
On DVD or streaming : August 16, 2022
Cast : Mason Thames , Ethan Hawke , Madeleine McGraw
Director : Scott Derrickson
Inclusion Information : Female actors
Studio : Universal Pictures
Genre : Horror
Run time : 102 minutes
MPAA rating : R
MPAA explanation : violence, bloody images, language and some drug use.
Last updated : April 8, 2024

Did we miss something on diversity?

Research shows a connection between kids' healthy self-esteem and positive portrayals in media. That's why we've added a new "Diverse Representations" section to our reviews that will be rolling out on an ongoing basis. You can help us help kids by suggesting a diversity update.

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Review: Thriller ‘The Black Phone’ is captivating, really

This image released by Universal Pictures shows Ethan Hawke, left, and Mason Thames in a scene from “The Black Phone.” (Universal Pictures via AP)

This image released by Universal Pictures shows Ethan Hawke as The Grabber in a scene from “The Black Phone.” (Universal Pictures via AP)

This image released by Universal Pictures shows Mason Thames in a scene from “The Black Phone.” (Universal Pictures via AP)

This image released by Universal Pictures shows Mason Thames, left, and Madeleine McGraw in a scene from “The Black Phone.” (Universal Pictures via AP)

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Phones in serial killer movies are usually used by the deranged hunters to taunt the police or carefully tell victims how they’ll die. But in “The Black Phone” it’s the other way around, fitting for a horror-thriller that flips many of the genre’s formula.

The serial killer at the heart of Scott Derrickson’s latest film is clueless about the chunky wall-mounted rotary phone in his soundproof dungeon. He tells his victims it hasn’t worked in years. They think otherwise: They use it to communicate with each other.

The kid-centric thriller “The Black Phone” is a very satisfying balancing act of a movie that has elements of supernatural, psychological suspense and horror but never falls heavily into a single camp. It also has one of the most satisfying ending of a horror-thriller in recent years.

The film — set in northern Denver in 1978 — follows 13-year-old Finney, played with real verve by newcomer Mason Thames. The filmmakers establish a grim mood right from the start, with wide-scale bullying, school-yard fights, bloody bruises and alcoholic and abusive parents. Add to this mix, the low-level buzz of homemade missing posters on walls.

There’s a serial killer prowling, nicknamed The Grabber, (In a nod to John Wayne Gacy, he’s a professional magician. And in perhaps another nod to The Steve Miller Band, he drives around in a black truck emblazoned with the word “Abracadabra,” fitting the lyrics “I wanna reach out and grab ya.”) Five teen boys have vanished. Finney — and his spunky younger sister, a fabulous Madeleine McGraw — are old enough to understand stranger abduction but still young enough to think that saying his name out loud is unlucky.

Finney knows a few of the victims but gets a first-hand knowledge when The Grabber — a confusing Ethan Hawke — nabs him and locks him in his basement, a space meant to hold humans. It’s carefully curated except for that black phone the killer says is disconnected, it’s wires cut. So why does it keep ringing for Finney?

Poor Hawk is marooned as another one of those pure movie psychos, by turns gentlemanly and menacing. We’ve seen his like before, a chilling precision with enunciation and that relentless, bloodless toying with his victim. His only stand-out quality is a very good collection of creepy masks. (Halloween will be super nuts this year if this movie takes off.)

“The Black Phone” is in some ways a reteaming of the guys who made “Sinister” in 2012 — Derrickson and cowriter C. Robert Cargill partnered with producer Jason Blum and Hawke for that one, too. This time, they’re leaning on horror royalty — the source material is a short story by Joe Hill, the pen name of Joe King, son of Stephen King.

The filmmakers, to my mind, lean a little too much on the supernatural to free Finney — does the phone really need to periodically beat like a heart? — but that’s me. The movie has a “Stranger Things”-meets-"Room” vibe and even namechecks a film deep in its debt: “Texas Chain Saw Massacre.”

The film’s tagline is “Don’t Talk to Strangers” and it’s painfully wrong. While applicable to The Grabber, Finn learns that the voices on the other end of the black phone are his previous victims. They’re helping him, each call a way to outwit The Grabber and, put together, a way home safe. “Use what we gave you,” one disembodied voice counsels.

What makes “The Black Phone” stand out is how it perfectly captures what growing up was like in the often raw ‘70s and an utter respect for the world of kids. Every adult is either dismissive and distant — or downright murderous. At its center is the fraternity of teen victims and the bond between sister and brother working against the twisted adult world. It will, uh, grab you.

“The Black Phone,” a Universal Pictures and Blumhouse release that hits theaters on Friday, is rated R for “violence, bloody images, language and some drug use.” Running time: 103 minutes. Three stars out of four.

MPAA definition of R: Restricted. Under 17 requires accompanying parent or adult guardian.

Online: https://www.theblackphonemovie.com

Mark Kennedy is at http://twitter.com/KennedyTwits

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Ethan Hawke plays the Grabber in The Black Phone.

The Black Phone review – Ethan Hawke is eerily good in scary-clown kidnap horror

Impressive performances help an uneven plot in this 70s-set kidnap horror based on a story by Stephen King’s son Joe Hill

H ere is a supernatural shocker that amounts to a queasy, nasty and perfectly serviceable horror-homage to Stephen King; it is in fact based on a 2004 short story by the author’s son, Joe Hill. The setting is north Denver, in the double-denim world of the late 70s, and a small town is in fear of a serial abductor nicknamed “the Grabber”, played in a gruesome mask by Ethan Hawke. He is targeting teenage boys, reportedly driving around in clown gear with black balloons in his van. Tatty, yellowing “missing” posters are accumulating on walls and gateposts and the community is normalising and internalising its fear.

Finney Shaw (Mason Thames) is a shy child, good at mathematics and baseball whose widower dad (Jeremy Davies) is a depressive alcoholic and whose smart kid sister Gwen (Madeleine McGraw) appears to have inherited her late mother’s gift of second sight. When the Grabber takes Finney, he holds him prisoner in a scuzzy basement room with a weird wall-mounted black dialler phone which is apparently disconnected. But this phone eerily rings when the Grabber isn’t there, with ghosts of his previous victims on the line; meanwhile Gwen has dreams about the Grabber that the police are taking very seriously.

This is watchable entertainment that achieves a reasonable altitude with its jump-scares, and whose suspense-thriller aspect keeps it engaging on a human level: but there’s a kind of plot issue in the film’s second act, with Finney’s terrified life as the Grabber’s prisoner in which he seems to be able to get away with an enormous amount of undetected escape preparation. But Hawke, whose creepy bad-guy potential is a plausible new career direction, is unnerving, and there are really good performances from Thames and McGraw.

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Ethan Hawke
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‘the black phone’: film review | fantastic fest 2021.

Scott Derrickson’s adaptation of a Joe Hill story stars Mason Thames as a boy who receives supernatural help in his attempts to escape a serial killer played by Ethan Hawke.

By John DeFore

John DeFore

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The second feature film (after several TV projects) based on the work of horror author Joe Hill, Scott Derrickson ’s The Black Phone expands on a short story in ways that feel very true to the source material while significantly enhancing its theatrical appeal. It was never in doubt that this would be a more commercial outing than the deeply odd (but effective, in its way) 2013 adaptation Horns , but the picture also dovetails nicely with the current vogue for retro-set genre fare, lightly scratching a nostalgic itch without seeming at all like it’s trying to ride Stranger Things ’ coattails. (Or those of Hill’s father and Stranger inspiration, Stephen King, though this story could easily be one of his.)

The Black Phone

Venue: Fantastic Fest

Release date: Friday, Jan. 28

Cast: Mason Thames, Madeleine McGraw, Ethan Hawke, Jeremy Davies, James Ransone

Director: Scott Derrickson

Screenwriters: Scott Derrickson, C. Robert Cargill

Like the boogeyman in King’s It , the Grabber approaches his prey in the garb of a clown. But this is a vastly more straightforward thriller, whose menace has nothing to do with the supernatural. Ethan Hawke ’s nameless character, whose motives we’ll never dig into, is simply a man who kidnaps teenage boys while posing as a party entertainer, keeps them locked up for a while, and presumably murders them.

Here, the spirit world is in contact only with the good guys, even if its attempts to help often scare them. Like her absent mother before her, Gwen is troubled by prophetic dreams. Her visions predicted the most recent kidnapping, with a specificity that brought her to the attention of local detectives. (Interacting with them and other authority figures, McGraw steals scenes with foul-mouthed impatience.) But she has no advance warning that Finney will be next.

Derrickson and writing partner C. Robert Cargill set us up to wonder if what’s in store between Finney and the Grabber will be a two-handed psychodrama. Once he has kidnapped Finney and locked him in his large, nearly empty basement, the Grabber is nearly gentle to the boy. “I’m not going to hurt you,” he promises, tacitly suggesting that Finney isn’t like the boys who preceded him. But do those promises come from the man Hawke is playing, or from only one facet of him? The lower half of the Grabber’s mask can be switched out to depict different expressions, from no mouth at all to a Joker-like, menacing grin; each may represent a psychological state distinct from the others, as in M. Night Shyamalan’s abduction thriller Split .

But while the interactions between the two, and Finney’s attempts to find a way out, work well enough to sustain purely reality-based suspense, that’s not all we get. An old rotary phone hangs on the basement wall, and it rings an awful lot for one whose cord hangs severed beneath it. Finney starts getting calls from the spirits of the basement’s previous residents, each of whom has his own piece of advice for the kid. Clearly, none of them escaped, so Finn will have to add his own abilities to their know-how — and maybe benefit from Gwen’s as well — if he hopes to get out.

Even when projecting utter desperation, Thames is spirited enough to keep the film from becoming utterly bleak, and the action aboveground offers some lighthearted moments of hope — from Gwen’s increasingly grouchy interaction with a God who won’t deliver visions on demand, to the involvement in the case of Max (James Ransone), a coked-up wild card whose efforts as a civilian detective may be more valuable than the cops think.

A couple of effective jump-scares aside, the film runs on ticking-clock suspense, knowing that whatever the Grabber says, it’s unlikely Finn will stay in his good graces for very long. The story’s final third works even better than the buildup would suggest, shrugging off some of the atmospherics and, with a clever nod to a classic in the serial-killer genre, focusing all the movie’s energies on a sequence that delivers. Happy or sad, this episode will certainly be immortalized in neighborhood lore, the kind of half-factual legend repeated from one school year to the next, until something more exciting happens.

Full credits

Venue: Fantastic Fest Distributor: Universal Pictures Production company: Crooked Highway Cast: Mason Thames, Madeleine McGraw, Ethan Hawke, Jeremy Davies, James Ransone Director: Scott Derrickson Screenwriters: Scott Derrickson, C. Robert Cargill Producers: Jason Blum, C. Robert Cargill, Scott Derrickson Executive producers: Joe Hill, Ryan Turek, Christopher H. Warner Director of photography: Brett Jutkiewicz Production designer: Patti Podesta Costume designer: Amy Andrews Editor: Frédéric Thoraval Casting directors: Sarah Domeier Lindo, Terri Taylor

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The Black Phone Review

24 Jun 2022

The Black Phone

Where do you go when you’re lost? If you can, you find a way home. In many ways, this is the path that filmmaker Scott Derrickson has chosen. After exiting Marvel ’s Doctor Strange In The Multiverse Of Madness (possibly via a glowing orange portal) during pre-production, having successfully launched the character on screen in 2016’s Doctor Strange , the director now finds himself back in, well, Sinister territory with this, his horror comeback. There’s ultra-dark subject matter. Ethan Hawke in a major role. Regular co-writer C. Robert Cargill back on scripting duties. Jason Blum as producer. Scott Derrickson is home again.

Following his foray into multi-million-dollar blockbuster territory, The Black Phone is not so much a step back for the director as it is a film about looking back — at what home really is; at Derrickson’s own upbringing; at the forces (and friendships) that forge us into who we are. The ideal prism through which to explore these ideas is Joe Hill’s short story, taken from his 2005 20th Century Ghosts collection, resulting in an adaptation whose bleak premise and personal demons coalesce into a surprisingly warm, hopeful, and — yes — scary film.

Derrickson has spoken much about his own childhood in relation to The Black Phone , having grown up in a scuzzy ’70s Denver neighbourhood suffused with violence. It was a time not just of physical parental discipline and bloody, kid-on-kid backyard beat-ups, but one in which the spectre of Ted Bundy (who committed several murders in Colorado at that time) loomed large. All of these forces swirl around The Black Phone ’s central figure of Finney, excellently played by Mason Thames in his big-screen debut. He’s an almost-teen growing up in scuzzy ’70s Denver, where his alcoholic father regularly brandishes his belt as a whipping tool, bullies wait round quiet corners to ambush him, and the local urban legend of child-catcher ‘The Grabber’ adds an ever-present threat of abduction. Even before he’s held captive in The Grabber’s basement, Finney lives in the shadow of danger.

Derrickson’s film spends a reasonable amount of time in the outside world before trapping its central character in stark, concrete walls — evoking the time and place with a Linklaterian ability to turn memories into movie scenes. ’70s rock pounds on the soundtrack (The Edgar Winter Group’s ‘Free Ride’ can’t help but evoke Dazed And Confused ), bottle rockets soar, and kids brag in bathroom stalls about seeing The Texas Chain Saw Massacre . It all feels fondly remembered — but that warmth sits side-by-side with the ever-present threat of physical and emotional torment, and tales of boys vanishing with black balloons left at the scene. Derrickson evokes both the nostalgia and the nastiness with skill, neither one negating the other.

Hawke becomes one with The Grabber's masks, perfectly moulded to his facial contours. It’s hard to look away.

Once The Grabber bundles Finney into his black van, the film dials in on its central conceit: that the killer’s former victims can speak to the boy from beyond the grave through a disconnected landline attached to the basement wall. It’s here that The Black Phone plays like the darkest possible iteration of an Amblin movie (yes, darker than IT ), as child ghosts call up to help Finney escape a similar fate. Hawke, in a rare villain role (albeit his second this year, post- Moon Knight ), gives a frightening and fascinating physical performance — since his face is masked for almost the entire movie, it’s his presence (sometimes dominant, sometimes playful, always creepy) and vocal work that most impresses. He swaps out the upper and lower portions of his devil-horned mask like some fucked-up psychological exercise — donning frowns that feel more like snarls, or malice-dripping Man Who Laughs grins. Sometimes, he exposes his eyes or mouth entirely. Hawke becomes one with those masks, perfectly moulded to his facial contours. It’s hard to look away.

The Black Phone ’s effective jolts and jump-scares should quell summer crowds looking for a straight-up scarefest, but it’s the dread that’s most palpable — the spectre of waiting for repercussive violence, whether in Finney’s attempts to escape The Grabber’s basement, or when anticipating his father’s wrath. And the salvation from all this is companionship; from the lingering ghosts of fellow kids, or Finney’s psychic sister Gwen ( Madeleine McGraw , also excellent), who dreams in Super 8 and delivers perhaps the greatest cinematic prayer of 2022: “Jesus: What the fuck?!”

While there are occasional tonal missteps — James Ransone ’s brief supporting character Max, conducting his own Grabber investigation, feels out of place — The Black Phone manages to be a mainstream genre movie that also feels deeply personal and impassioned. It’s horror, delivered with considerable heart. Welcome home, Scott.

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The Black Phone (2021)

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The Black Phone review: A spooky, surface-level thriller

The Black Phone is at its best when it’s working with as little as possible. A majority of the new film from Doctor Strange director Scott Derrickson takes place in a grimy basement, but it manages to make the most out of its central confined space — filling it with intimidating shadows and secrets for its protagonist to discover over the course of The Black Phone ’s 102-minute runtime. Based on a short story of the same name by Stephen King ’s son, Joe Hill, the film follows a young boy who gets kidnapped by a notorious child killer and has only a few days to escape before he becomes the man’s next victim.

Calls from the other side

Tangled in black balloons, an unrewarding ordeal.

The film’s premise supplies it with an easy-to-grasp conflict and enough tension to sustain a feature-length story, and when The Black Phone actually focuses on its young protagonist’s efforts to escape from the soundproofed basement he’s found himself trapped in, it works as a visceral, occasionally spooky horror-thriller. It’s when The Black Phone attempts to bend its thriller plot to be compatible with certain themes about abuse and self-esteem, however, that the film comes up disappointingly short.

Set in the late 1970s, The Black Phone takes place in a suburban Colorado town that has recently found itself living in fear of a notorious child kidnapper known only as “The Grabber” ( Ethan Hawke ). Several children have already gone missing by the time Finney Shaw (Mason Thames), a kindhearted young boy from an abusive home, is drugged and trapped in a basement by Hawke’s sadistic criminal. Shortly after his capture, Finney’s nightmarish entrapment quickly takes a surreal turn when the disconnected phone that hangs from one of the basement’s walls begins to ring.

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When Finney answers the phone, he discovers that it allows him to communicate with the ghosts of the children that The Grabber has previously killed. The film then follows Finney as he attempts to escape from his captor’s basement by using the knowledge and advice of those who have already been trapped there. At the same time, Finney’s younger sister, Gwen (Madeleine McGraw), finds herself experiencing otherworldly visions and dreams, which she uses to try and discover where her brother is being kept.

Gwen’s quest allows Derrickson to frequently cut away from Finney’s imprisonment in The Grabber’s basement — gifting the film with moments of brief humor and reprieve from the claustrophobic tension of its central sequences. That said, Derrickson, who has returned to the horror genre after briefly taking a detour into the MCU, never misses a chance to ratchet up the tension as much as possible during the film’s Grabber scenes. One midpoint sequence involving a bike lock, in particular, easily ranks as one of the tensest stretches of any film released so far this year.

However, The Grabber’s imprisonment of Finney is not the only form of abuse that’s depicted in The Black Phone . The film’s overlong opening act is relentlessly violent and that’s true without even counting certain scenes involving Finney and Gwen’s abusive father, Terrence (Jeremy Davies), one of which sees him repeatedly beat Gwen with his belt while Finney watches helplessly from across the room. The sequence in question is shockingly brutal, and it sets a mean-spirited tone that’s difficult for The Black Phone to shake off from that point on.

Derrickson, to his credit, remains as talented as ever at making the violence in his films feel visceral and authentic, but depicting real-world, grounded forms of violence like child abuse requires a level of deftness and sensitivity that The Black Phone lacks. The film’s early instances of mundane violence only begin to stand out more, however, once certain dreamlike elements are introduced.

Derrickson uses the film’s titular phone to conjure several inspired, memorable images, like that of a child’s ghost hanging upside down in one corner of The Grabber’s basement, the youngster’s presence initially made clear only by the sound of their blood perpetually dripping onto the floor. In several of the film’s most visually inspired moments, Finney also sees the phone expand and shrink at the same measured pace as a heart. Combined, these images inject The Black Phone with several refreshing, dreamlike moments of grim escapism, which make the otherwise all-too-real horror of Finney’s situation slightly easier to take.

As Finney, Thames turns in a surprisingly assured, measured performance. McGraw also shines as Gwen, Finney’s feisty and caring younger sister, and the ride-or-die bond that exists between Gwen and Finney is easily the most emotionally affecting element of The Black Phone . Hawke, meanwhile, turns in a reliably charismatic, in-your-face performance as the film’s blandly named villain. As is usually the case with Hawke’s characters, he manages to add several more shades to someone who is rather thinly sketched.

But for as effective as the performances in The Black Phone are, nothing in the film is strong enough to save it from itself. The film’s attempts to say anything of worth about abuse are, at best, muddled and unclear and, at worst, deeply troubling. Not content with allowing the film to exist solely as an exercise in tension and suspense, Derrickson and co-writer C. Robert Cargill attempt to turn The Black Phone into a kind of coming-of-age tale for Thames’ Finney. Consequently, the film goes out of its way in its first act to establish Finney as a young man incapable of fighting back against his abusers. It’s a flaw the film argues he needs to overcome.

In certain contexts, that would be a powerful and worthwhile message, but it’s one that doesn’t really work here. The film’s belief in the necessity of fighting back is commendable, but less so when it tries to send that message while also telling a story about a boy who is repeatedly physically abused by his father. Beyond that, using his imprisonment and kidnapping as the dramatic event that gives Finney confidence that he needs to talk to the girl he’s always had a crush on is a wildly misguided idea — one that greatly underplays the severity of the kind of trauma and abuse that Finney experiences throughout The Black Phone .

With that in mind, it’s hard to talk about The Black Phone without thinking of Leigh Whannell’s modern take on The Invisible Man . That 2020 thriller attempts to use a heightened genre story as a vehicle to investigate the complexities of abuse in much the same way that The Black Phone does. But what The Invisible Man understands that The Black Phone doesn’t is that personal abuse, whether it’s coming from a parent or partner, isn’t something you beat — it’s something you survive . Apparently, that’s a call the makers of The Black Phone didn’t receive.

The Black Phone hits theaters on Friday, June 24.

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Barbarian is a true swing for the fences. The film, which marks writer-director Zach Cregger’s solo directorial debut, is a horror mash-up that seems in certain moments like a modern riff on The Texas Chain Saw Massacre and at other times like a loving homage to the kind of campy horror comedies that Sam Raimi has perfected. When it’s at its best is when Barbarian feels like it is combining those influences to become a horror ride that is simultaneously absurd and terrifying.

More than anything else, Barbarian is unlike anything else you’ll see in a movie theater this year. That kind of remark doesn’t always equal praise. Uniqueness alone is, after all, not enough to save a movie that is otherwise coming apart at the seams. In the case of Barbarian, though, the film's commitment to delivering a genuinely unpredictable and tonally-challenging experience is what makes it so memorable. To watch it is to get swept up not only in the dramatic stakes of the film’s story but also in the audacious, go-for-broke creative spirit at the center of it.

Regardless of how much they might suggest otherwise, no one wants to be seen as uncool. Who Invited Them, the new horror comedy from writer-director Duncan Birmingham, understands that. To its credit, the film also understands that a person's desire to be accepted and welcomed by those they admire can, in certain instances, lead them to ignore their own instincts and perform acts that they wouldn’t normally consider doing.

Consequently, while Who Invited Them never quite reaches the heights it would need to in order to be considered one of this year’s genre gems, it does manage to steal a trick from every great horror movie’s playbook. The film, which premieres exclusively on Shudder this week, weaponizes its characters’ core desires and forces them into a situation that only grows weirder and more distressing the further into its runtime Who Invited Them gets.

The Invitation wears its influences on its sleeve. The film’s moody, effectively spooky opening prologue, which throws viewers headfirst into the deserted halls of a creepy British mansion on one fateful night, feels like something that could have been ripped right out of a Guillermo del Toro film. Its premise, meanwhile, feels so strikingly similar to that of 2019’s Ready or Not that the YouTube page for The Invitation’s spoilerific first trailer is filled with comments comparing the two films.

In a sense, there’s something endearing about how obviously indebted The Invitation is to filmmakers like del Toro and modern horror thrillers like Ready or Not. But The Invitation also makes a classic mistake. It is, after all, commonly understood that acknowledging one’s influences is only a good idea if you’re capable of delivering something that still feels new and fresh. The Invitation doesn’t manage to do either. Instead, the ambitious, overlong new film packs neither the bite nor the thrills present in so many of its genre predecessors.

'The Black Phone' Review: Don't Answer That Call

The Grabber's gonna get you!

The Black Phone was probably the horror movie I was most excited for this year. Based on a Joe Hill short story, and directed by Scott Derrickson , who directed one of my favorite recent horror films, Sinister , it seemed to have everything going for it. I was ready to love it.

And yet, I did not.

Set in 1978, in a small, working-class suburb in West Denver, the town has been besieged by a series of child kidnappings. Interestingly, no one seems particularly terrified by these seizures. There has been no curfew installed, and no one seems to change their daily routines. It’s weirdly background fodder. Maybe because our main kids, siblings Finney ( Mason Thames ) and Gwen ( Madeleine McGraw ), have an abusive, alcoholic father and neighborhood bullies to deal with. They can’t be worried about The Grabber ( Ethan Hawke ) – as the news stations have dubbed him – getting his grubby paws on them.

Until he does. Driving around in a black Abracadabra-branded minivan, The Grabber uses a bouquet of black balloons to hide a canister of gas which he uses to knock out his victim. He uses this on Finney as he is walking home from school. When Finney wakes, he is in a soundproofed basement, with only a bare mattress, a toilet, several rolled-up rugs, and a disconnected black phone on the wall.

Though that phone is disconnected, it still rings, and on the other end are the ghosts of the boys who had been kidnapped before Finney. They all offer various tips on how to escape, but none of them work. On the outside, Gwen has vaguely psychic dreams that she – and the police – hope will lead them to her brother. These dreams were a gift that was handed down from her mother, who killed herself over her own “gifts.” Gwen’s psychic gifts felt like an afterthought, or an underdeveloped red herring. It felt shoehorned into the story.

RELATED: 'The Black Phone': Release Date, Cast, Trailer, and Everything You Need to Know

I am probably going to sound like a sadist for saying this… but there didn’t feel like there was any real danger for Finney here. He spent most of his time alone, in that basement. The Grabber didn’t touch him. He didn’t threaten him. He hardly even came downstairs and did anything weird or alarming. He could have done a bizarre dance or told a befuddling joke… anything, really. He had virtually no contact with Finney at all. It was mostly just Finney and the ghosts of dead children trying to figure a way out.

On top of that, we never knew anything about The Grabber. I’m not talking about knowing his motivation; we knew nothing . We don’t know anything other than he likes to abduct and kill adolescent boys, and there is a hint at the beginning that he was once held in a basement like the one he holds Finney in. That’s it. If we are getting a hint that he was abused as a kid, I want to know more, I want to know how that translates into a troubled adulthood. How does the mask tie into that? Why does he panic if it is removed? Is he really a magician? Why is the color black so important to him? How does he choose his victims? How long does he keep them alive? When and how does he decide to kill them? Is it a ritualized murder?

There are very few classic hallmarks of horror films in The Black Phone. They arrive in the third act, but before that, it is a lot of… nothing. Talking. No cat-and-mouse chasing. No killing. Not even any suspense. You know Finney has been kidnapped; you know who took him; you know that the previous kids are dead.

I will say that things picked up at the end, but I don’t want to say anything more for fear of spoiling it. But boy… it was a struggle getting there.

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‘The Black Phone’: Who Wants a Lazy Serial-Killer Thriller?

By A.A. Dowd

What serial killer worth his weight in dismembered corpses would be happy with a moniker as uncreative and flatly descriptive as “the Grabber?” That’s the name either a lazy detective or a reporter on deadline has bestowed upon the 1970s child-murdering villain Ethan Hawke plays in The Black Phone , a gloomy new Blumhouse thriller from director Scott Derrickson ( Sinister, Doctor Strange ). At least the killer looks creepy enough, issuing casual threats from behind a kabuki-like mask that magically changes expression to match his shifting moods. We’re guessing it slumped out of toothy rictus grin and into a pouty frown when the bad guy first saw his unchosen nom de guerre splashed across a front page.

The Grabber seems to have put most of his creative energy towards his facewear. There’s nothing terribly distinctive or elaborate about his methods, which amount to locking kids away in his dungeon, taunting them with condescending remarks, and then just kind of waiting for them to mount a feeble escape attempt, after which he can justify doing his grisly thing. Hawke brings a certain spooky nonchalance to the role, conveying the mundanity of evil through the uninflected naturalism of his delivery. But he’s playing a rather low-concept psychopath, too lethargic to develop much of a gimmick or even the impression of a fearsomely fucked-up pathology.

Much of the movie takes place in that aforementioned dungeon: a soundproofed basement with a dirty mattress, a single high window, and the rotary device of the title. It’s here that 13-year-old Finney (newcomer Mason Thames) is dismayed to discover that he’s joined the gallery of kids with their names and faces plastered on posters all over town. Finney, a quiet loner type, might be doomed to meet the same fate as those before him were it not for a rather literal lifeline: That supposedly non-functioning phone periodically rings, and on the other end are the voices of the Grabber’s slain victims, all offering advice on how the boy might avoid making the same mistakes they did and capitalize on their combined knowledge of the property.

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The premise is reasonably clever and gripping. It comes from a short story by Joe Hill, son of none other than Stephen King. The Grabber’s hunting grounds are the northern suburbs of Denver circa ’78, all bell bottoms, FM radio hits and rabbit-ear TVs. But any viewer up on their tales of missing kids in deceptively idyllic small-town America could be forgiven for mistaking this real place for one of King’s haunted Maine burgs. Mean bullies, abusive and neglectful grownups, tween losers racing away on their bicycles — it’s all very Derry. In fact, the movie often plays like another Stranger Things dilution, watering down the paperback thrills of literature’s reigning master of horror into an inferior throwback substitution. Do we mention that the Grabber lures his prey with a bundle of black balloons?

Hill, to his credit, doesn’t offer quite so many blatant nods to his father’s work. On the page, The Black Phone is ruthlessly efficient — a lean, mean, 30-page survival yarn, King-ish mostly in its punchy prose. But in expanding this short story into a feature-length movie, Derrickson fatally slackens the tension. His script, co-authored with regular collaborator C. Robert Cargill, lingers on generic coming-of-age business before getting to the kidnapping, then keeps cutting away from Finney’s dilemma for curiously perfunctory scenes with his clairvoyant, annoyingly precocious little sister (Madeleine McGraw), who curses like a sailor and “comically” bargains with Jesus. The bumbling local cops seem to gather all their leads from her vaguely promontory dreams. Also ineffectually on the case is an amateur gumshoe (ace character actor James Ransone) too dim to realize just how close to the truth he really is. Where’s Clarice Starling, or even a nominally competent manhunter, when you need her?

Derrickson, returning to his genre roots after a brief toil in the Marvel content mill, is capable of tauter entertainment. A decade ago, he corralled both Hawke and Ransone into Sinister , a much more effective Stephen King riff about children imperiled by a malevolent stalker. That horror movie had real ideas about the divided priorities of its protagonist, a writer endangering his family for the sake of his breadwinning work. More importantly, perhaps, it was just really scary — an expertly paced haunted-house movie that used snippets of celluloid surveillance to worm effortlessly under the viewer’s skin.

The Black Phone , which similarly steers into the occasional 8mm-stock detour, only gets a few drops of genuine suspense from its familiar conceit. The ending is an easy layup, all but guaranteed to inspire applause, but it could have really killed if the Grabber’s gauntlet of terror, well, grabbed us harder throughout. The guy’s an eerie mask in search of a bona fide bogeyman; he’s no more genuinely unsettling than what you’d find lining the strip-mall shelves of a Spirit Halloween . And to pull back the film’s own Pennywisian mask of derivative fright-making is to find nothing much underneath.

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The Black Phone Review: Coming-of-Age Gets Scary in a Great, Violent Thriller

While it may not please those seeking a straight-up horror movie, The Black Phone is a dark, effective, and thrilling look at childhood and violence.

Sometimes, the most terrifying thing in the world is being a kid. Too young to fully comprehend the complicated machinations of life, and too small to protect oneself from threats both physical and emotional, childhood can be scary. Whether it's monsters under the bed or screaming matches between parents, bullies at school or the crushing social anxiety of young romance, being a vulnerable kid is often painful, difficult, and confusing. This is probably why so many films are about coming-of-age , and so much media in the horror or supernatural genre draws on childhood to tell their stories.

The Black Phone is yet another one, and it's a brutal depiction of childhood. In the film, Finney Shaw essentially suffers everything a kid can — one dead parent and one who's drunk and abusive, very violent bullies, social anxiety with his crush, a sometimes scaredy-cat disposition, loneliness, and a lack of a friend group; he even opens the film costing his softball team the game. This barrage of suffering doesn't compare to what's in store for him though, after being kidnaped by a psychotic masked man known as The Grabber.

The Black Phone and the Violence of Childhood

Finney's life, like The Black Phone , is pretty bleak and getting bleaker, but there are streaks of luminescence in this darkness. His sister Gwen is a shining beacon of hope in his dark world, a wonderfully multifaceted character who's tough enough to cuss out cops and smash kids with rocks if they mess with her brother, but sweet enough to open her dollhouse and arrange her religious iconography every day to pray. She's a wonderful character, protective of Finney and afraid of little in this cruel world except, perhaps, for her father, a wrecked nightmare of a man. A severely alcoholic and diseased person angry over the death of his wife, whom he sees in Gwen and can't stand, Mr. Shaw uses violence to pathetically prop up what's left of his rotten ego.

This is the crux of The Black Phone — violence as a human ritual for protection. In this small Denver suburb in 1978, the school bullies perennially beat up others to protect their status and pride, the drunken father engages in belt-whipping in a routine to protect his position of authority and fragile ego, Gwen uses violence to protect Finney, and so does Finney's only friend in the world, Robin. (A key scene finds Robin beating the bloody viscera out of a bully, with Finney walking away in disgust). The Grabber uses an explicitly ritualized system of violence to protect his very sense of self and crumbling psyche. Interestingly, until the movie's final scenes , The Grabber is practically the only character to not draw blood.

The Black Phone is Not a True Story But is True to Childhood

That's because the world that writer/director Scott Derrickson and his frequent co-writer C. Robert Cargill (who both also worked with Ethan Hawke in Sinister ) has painted in The Black Phone is a misanthropic and cruel one, perhaps needlessly so. However, there's an argument to be made that the violence in this small town is exaggerated to represent how Finney feels as a child.

Related: Scott Derrickson Says Walking Away From Doctor Strange 2 Was 'Most Difficult Decision' of His Career

This might explain some leaps of logic in The Black Phone , small things which require a tight suspension of disbelief that allegories often use, like the fact that five children have gone missing in a very small town and yet there's no curfew or heavy police presence on the streets for when a glaringly obvious, huge black van pulls up in broad daylight to abduct kids. Or how kids' skulls are smashed with rocks or their faces bashed into a pulp without seemingly any ramifications or consequences. All of this means that, while not the most realistic film, The Black Phone uses its exaggerations to be true to the nature of a traumatic childhood.

The Allegorical Horror of The Black Phone

If it's taken a while for this review to get to the horror of The Black Phone , that's because the film does the same. Though it has a very engaging first half, the actual scares and horror elements of the film take a while to develop (though when they do, there are a few solid jump scares and some wonderfully creepy moments).

Those seeking a straight-up horror film might be a bit disappointed by the patience the film sometimes demands, because The Black Phone is horror the way The Sixth Sense was horror — using genre elements to tell a dramatic and often suspenseful story about childhood. The film feels more like Room remade by Stephen King (whose son, Joe Hill, actually wrote the short story it's based on).

The allegorical nature of The Black Phone is made clear by its titular supernatural device. Antiquated and disconnected on the concrete walls of the bare basement in which Finney is held, the phone nonetheless rings. Through its dark receiver, Finney is able to communicate with the five dead boys that The Grabber has kidnaped; each one provides tips from their experience in the basement, helping Finney with clues, riddles, and objects they discovered during their stay.

Meanwhile, Gwen's dreams give her hints about The Grabber, as the girl is imbued with the same 'touched' powers of her deceased mother (which is part of Mr. Shaw's resentment of her). Though each dead victim and psychic dream leads to a frustrating impasse, they build up the suspense and come together ingeniously in the final sequences.

Scott Derrickson Uses Horror For Coming-of-Age

The finale of The Black Phone makes it clear that a lot of the film is a coming-of-age allegory about standing up for yourself and dealing with the world's onslaught of threats; it's about Finney coming to terms with his childhood. This is made clear by some similarities between the two different violent male adults in the film, The Grabber and Mr. Shaw, and the way they each hold a belt for punishment. The basement is symbolic of Finney's childhood itself and is the basement every tortured, self-conscious, lonely kid has to metaphorically escape to grow up.

Related: The Best Coming-Of-Age Films of the '80s

The Black Phone is Scott Derrickson's escape from his own proverbial basement. The Doctor Strange director's childhood town impacted him heavily, as he tells Wenlei Ma for an Australian news site . "I was inclined to tell a story like this, because I felt that I had a lot of work at reckoning with aspects of my past and the impact it had on my life and who I was becoming as a person." Derrickson continues:

I grew up in an area of north Denver that was pretty violent, a lot of bullying, a lot of fighting, a lot of kids were bleeding all the time. It was also right after Ted Bundy had come through Colorado, killing people. And the Manson murders had just happened. When I was eight years old, my friend next door came knocking at my front door and said, ‘Somebody murdered my mum.’ The mother of my friend next door was murdered. And there was a lot of domestic violence, even in my own home and in the homes of a lot of these kids that I knew. Parents punished children much more aggressively, and so it was a very violent, scary kind of place to grow up in a lot of ways. And I tried to bring that environment realistically into the movie.

“The Black Phone is essentially about childhood trauma, and it really is about what that is like and what it feels like," Derrickson says, and the world he and Cargill creates in The Black Phone helps process this expertly.

Ethan Hawke, Mason Thames, and Madeleine McGraw Are Amazing in The Black Phone

Of course, this kind of catharsis would only be personal and not an excellent film without the talent of so many people involved. The young Mason Thames leads the proceedings as Finney and does an incredible job, even when he has practically nothing to work with, alone in a sparse basement. His resolution and arc from cowardice to courage is perfectly expressed despite his surprisingly stoic face. Madeleine McGraw might just be the best part of The Black Phone as Gwen, a delightful combination of precociousness and innocence, suffering and strength. Whether she's incongruously cussing out Jesus in her otherwise sweet prayers or fighting with her father, the young actor explodes in every scene she's in.

Related: How Ethan Hawke Has Mastered the Art of Being a Villain

Then, of course, there's Ethan Hawke as The Grabber. Much has been made of his performance and his recent turn to villainy in roles like this, Moon Knight , and Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets , and for good reason. While Hawke is obviously a master of his craft (and a great writer), it's been fascinating to see him take on such menace recently. The actor was worried about playing villains, telling Entertainment Weekly , "I've always had this theory that when you teach an audience how to see the demon inside you, they don't un-see it for the rest of your career." While hopefully this isn't true, it wouldn't exactly be a negative thing to have more Hawke villains.

That's because he's amazing here. Hawke hides his face in a variety of ways behind a combination of masks with detachable parts designed by the great Tom Savini (who did make-up and effects for films such as Dawn of the Dead, Creepshow, Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2, and Friday the 13th ). Nonetheless, Hawke's great performance is incredibly expressive both physically and vocally, exuding psychotic menace with a kind of sick grace, but also childlike and unstable on occasion. With a long career as a true artist, it'd be presumptuous and perhaps unfair to say he's at the top of his game here, but he's close.

Hawke is the perfect manifestation of the horror Derickson wanted to exorcize. “Catharsis can come from using horror to confront the spoken or unspeakable evils in our lives, in ourselves, in our families, in strangers and nature, in the world. That’s what the genre is for; it’s all about in some ways confronting and facing what is frightening and traumatic in the world.” While there should be 'think pieces' on the arguably problematic conclusions The Black Phone comes to regarding violence and self-defense, the film itself is a great accomplishment. Wonderfully directed, expertly acted, and intelligently scripted, The Black Phone rings true.

From Universal Pictures, The Black Phone will be released theatrically on June 24th and can be streamed on Peacock 45 days after its release (August 8th).

Ethan Hawke ready for The Black Phone sequel

Ethan Hawke would love to make a sequel to 'The Black Phone'.

The 53-year-old actor played serial killer The Grabber in Scott Derrickson's hit 2022 horror flick and has revealed that he would be keen to reprise the part, even though he had seemingly met his maker at the end of the film.

Speaking to Collider, Ethan said: "Thanks, I have a good relationship, you know, like Maya (his actress daughter) said about directors - it's really true of Scott Derrickson. I had a really wonderful experience making my first scary movie with him. We did a movie called 'Sinister', and he's just a real filmmaker.

"I love the way he thinks about film and storytelling. And as I get older, I really enjoy working in different genres as an actor. It's a way to shape (and) change yourself as a performer. By trying to learn the math of what makes a great romantic comedy, what makes a great art film, what makes a great horror film, what makes a great Western, you know, there's a certain geometry to all that and Scott is brilliant at that. And so, basically, if he wants me to be in 'Black Phone 2', I'm gonna do it."

Derrickson previously said that he would consider revisiting the characters after the movie proved to be successful at the box office.

He told TheWrap: "It's not something that is innately exciting to me, in the case of this story. I'm interested in the characters we created, and I think there's a tone to the movie that is unique and can be expanded upon.

"So possibly, we'll see. You never know, but I'm certainly not closed off to the idea."

Ethan Hawke ready for The Black Phone sequel

Review: Is the Amy Winehouse biopic Back to Black as bad as the internet would have you believe?

Amy holds a headphone ear to her ear as she sings into a microphone, wearing signature eyeliner and beehive.

Director Sam Taylor-Johnson thinks Back to Black " probably is the best thing [she's] done ."

The biopic is the second film made about the iconic late singer Amy Winehouse. The first, directed by Asif Kapadia in 2015, won the Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature.

Pieced together with never-before-seen archival footage from Winehouse's teenage years, early performances and accounts from people close to Winehouse, Amy told the story of the uniquely talented young artist from beginning to end, using as many of her own words as possible.

In doing so, it captured the combination of humour, magnetism and raw emotion that Winehouse boldly poured into her work. And it showed the myriad forces that led to Winehouse's untimely demise at the tender age of 27, as the world scrutinised — and even laughed at — her substance use issues, eating disorder and heartbreak.

Taylor-Johnson's Back to Black is different in three significant ways.

Critics and fans have been wary of the film ever since its announcement, with that sense of trepidation growing following the release of the first set of photos — whereas Amy was released to acclaim from both camps . (Taylor-Johnson, who directed the 2009 John Lennon biopic Nowhere Boy, starring her now-husband Aaron Taylor-Johnson, told The Guardian she doesn't pay much attention to fan sentiment).

Back to Black has the support of the Winehouse estate , whereas the Amy documentary was publicly and repeatedly denounced by Winehouse's father , Mitch.

And Back to Black doesn't seek to tell the entire story of Winehouse's life or extremely public and harrowing death due to alcohol poisoning like Amy did.

Instead, it's a dramatised telling of the doomed love story between Winehouse (portrayed by relatively unknown actress Marisa Abela) and her ex-husband Blake Fielder-Civil (Jack O'Connell), relegating much of Winehouse's personhood and career to the background.

Amy sits on a curb as Blake leans over to her at nighttime, as they have a deep conversation.

We're first introduced to a pared back, late-teenage version of Winehouse, sans-signature beehive and cat-eye, on the cusp of being handed her first record deal and producing her 2003 debut, Frank.

From the film's opening scenes, it's obvious Abela can at least hold a tune. The fact her vocal training for this film took place over just four months is even impressive. But she is not, and will never, possess anywhere near the same level of vocal talent as Winehouse, which is why Back to Black's attempt to pass her voice off as such is jarring.

Some have argued Abela's voice is of no consequence to the telling of this story. But it's hard to feel that way when Abela breaks into song in basically every scene, and when the authenticity of Winehouse's music was such a core part of her being.

And then there is the question of Abela's physical resemblance to Winehouse. Mitch Winehouse has made the admittedly fair point that Abela didn't need to look "exactly like Amy" to get the role, and Taylor-Johnson said the casting decision came down to the fact Abela didn't try to look or sound like Winehouse in any way.

"I had all these young women come in with either a hoop earring or cat eye or something," she said on The Jonathan Ross Show .

"Marisa had none of that. I was fiddling around with the camera, chatting with the casting director and I just looked in the lens and Marisa looked up and she completely transformed. She hadn't even said anything. I thought, 'That's her'."

But whatever transformation Taylor-Johnson saw in Abela in that audition room hasn't translated to her on-screen performance.

Abela's embodiment of Winehouse's performance style and mannerisms feels like a pale imitation of the star's brazenness and sensuality. And Abela's take on Winehouse's gloriously heavy North London accent is exactly what you'd expect someone educated at the 'Eton College of girls boarding schools' trying on a working-class twang to sound like.

Amy, left, holds onto her dad Mitch's hand as they pass in front of his black cab in front of Bar Italia.

Abela's portrayal becomes less distracting and feels slightly more natural when Winehouse and Fielder-Civil meet by chance at the legendary Camden pub, The Good Mixer, not long after Frank's success has turned her into a recognisable household name in the UK.

This is because Abela's chemistry is undeniable with O'Connell, who first made a name for himself as a 19-year-old playing the cheeky, impulsive and frequent drug user Cook on Skins. Here, he has no trouble bringing a similar level of charisma and a much-needed dose of working-class authenticity to this production.

It's in an off moment of their turbulent, drug-fuelled, sometimes violent, on-and-off relationship that Winehouse creates her second and final record — the masterful album that would catapult her to international levels of fame and critical acclaim she never thought she'd achieve, and feared she wouldn't know how to handle.

But we don't see much of Back to Black's creation — only a montage featuring Abela singing the titular track in a New York studio, coinciding with her nan Cynthia's wrenching death in London.

The film begins its final descent into sanitised darkness when Fielder-Civil calls her up again post-Back to Black success, and they begin using crack cocaine and heroin together . If the tabloids' paparazzi pictures of Winehouse during this period didn't make for grim enough content for you in real-time, rest assured Back to Black goes further, constructing its own vivid narrative of what this time was like for the people at the centre of it.

Amy looks at a screen we can't see with a shocked expression on her face as she stands on a stage in a black dress.

Fielder-Civil isn't painted as the villain in this story, for breaking her heart or for any role he may have had in her substance use. Neither is Mitch, who is portrayed throughout as Winehouse's loving but often oblivious cab driver father by Eddie Marsan. Besides, Taylor-Johnson told the Guardian she doesn't believe in "stupid one dimensional demon characters".

There are only two supposed villains in this story: The paparazzi and addiction.

Winehouse's experiences with bulimia don't quite make the cut, copping only a few minutes of screentime, despite the fact she lived with the eating disorder from her teenage years onwards, and the claims that have been made about the impact it may have had on her failing health.

From Winehouse's 2008 Grammys Record of the Year win for Back to Black, the film essentially flashes forward to a few months before her death, which is inconceivably skated over with a black screen listing the details at the very end.

So, that's what you'll get if you decide to pay to see the highly anticipated Back to Black at the movies. Alternatively, Amy is streaming for free on ABC iview .

Back to Black is in cinemas now.

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Tv/streaming, collections, great movies, chaz's journal, contributors, don't tell mom the babysitters dead.

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Director Wade Allain-Marcus ’s “Don’t Tell Mom the Babysitter’s Dead” is a remake of the 1991 original, repurposing an older narrative for a new generation and, this time around, centering on a Black family. Seventeen-year-old Tanya Crandell ( Simone Joy Jones ) looks forward to her summer in Spain with her friends. But when her mother ( Patricia Williams ) is shafted at work, losing out on a promotion to a younger, whiter, male-r counterpart, she has a mental breakdown that warrants a summer-long R&R stay, which co-opts Tanya’s budget for abroad and leaves her indignantly stuck at home.

In her absence, Mrs. Crandell hires an elderly babysitter, Ms. Sturak ( June Squibb ), to watch the kids: Tanya, her stoner teen brother Kenny (Donielle T. Hensley Jr.), macabre little sister Melissa (Ayaamii Sledge), and nerdy kid brother Zack (Carter Young). Ms. Sturak is not the warm, fuzzy granny she appears to be, swapping out freshly baked cookies and comforting hugs for crude, blatantly racist remarks. When the siblings throw an all-out rager disguised as “Bible study,” the underage drinking, smoking, and queer romancing happening under their roof throws the conservative sitter into cardiac arrest. The kids are forced to hide the body and learn how to take care of themselves for the summer.

The responsibility falls on Tanya as the eldest and most responsible; with some clever Google deep dives and intricate Canva work, the siblings create a 25-year-old simulacrum of their sister, who uses her newly faked identity to land a job at Libra, a fashion company helmed by the ultimate girlboss, Rose ( Nicole Richie ). As Tanya juggles a summer of office politics, adult responsibilities, and a freshly spawned romance, “Don’t Tell Mom the Babysitter’s Dead” comedically centers on older sibling syndrome and the daunting pressures of adulthood and agency.

Writers Chuck Hayward , Neil Landau , and Tara Ison deliver a script chock full of hilarious one-liners that are kindly doled out evenly among the ensemble cast. Whether quipping on the quotidian precarities of being young Black kids in a wealthy white neighborhood (even aside from the dead white woman they disposed of) or the situational comedy of Tanya’s manufactured identity and adjustment to the 9-to-5 lifestyle, the script hands out laughs with generosity. Kenny’s penchant for weed and Melissa’s true crime fascinations also present familiar comedic archetypes for the film to lean on.

Unfortunately, many of these comic opportunities fall flat in the execution. Shoddy line deliveries keep you from recognizing the joke, requiring a few seconds of processing time to land. The performances often feel responsible for this; they feel uncanny and solitary as if the cast were projecting lines to the expectant ears of a studio audience that doesn’t exist. While this awkward independence of the functioning characters muddles some moments, it doesn’t entirely erase the recognizable humor that remains consistent throughout.

Jones acquits herself quite well in her first role as a leading lady. She displays a formidable amount of range, from the short fuse of an eldest sister’s stoicism to the personal and professional confidence she develops as the summer pushes her to expand her comfort zone. The dynamics of the sibling ensemble are also generally believable in their moments of union and annoyance. Hensley Jr. is a reliable source of comic relief, and his antics test his siblings’ patience and perseverance.

Tanya’s employee-employer relationships with Rose and her budding romance with aspiring architect Bryan ( Miles Fowler ) get more screen time than those with her siblings, making “Don’t Tell Mom the Babysitter’s Dead” more of a portrait of her than that of the family. While Richie’s performance is rather flat and one-note, it’s a testament to the hollow girlboss identity the film crafts in the shape of a chronically-online millennial Miranda Priestly. At the same time, the chemistry between Tanya and Bryan is the most persistent: Fowler and Jones feel natural, weaving through the attraction, timidity, and frustrations of young, insecure, and poorly communicated relationships. Yet this particular pairing has the least bearing on the film's events, and this display of potential exacerbates the desire for magnetism in the core sibling dynamic.

“Don’t Tell Mom the Babysitter’s Dead” is laid-back and funny but ultimately whiffs on its swings too many times to make a lasting impression. It has all the right components, earnestly eliciting a few chuckles and a true investment in its characters. Still, it comes together like a jigsaw puzzle whose pieces aren’t fully pressed into place: a flimsy portrait of teen comedy and coming-of-age that won’t stand the test of time.

Peyton Robinson

Peyton Robinson is a freelance film writer based in Chicago, IL.

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Don't Tell Mom the Babysitter's Dead movie poster

Don't Tell Mom the Babysitter's Dead (2024)

Simone Joy Jones as Tanya Crandell

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Nicole Richie as Rose

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Critically-acclaimed indie video game “ Dredge ” is getting the film treatment.

Black Salt Games has partnered with production company Story Kitchen to create a live-action feature adaptation of the single-player Lovecraftian fishing adventure with a sinister undercurrent.

In the game, players are invited to sell their catch, upgrade their boat and dredge the depths for long-buried secrets as they explore a mysterious archipelago and discover why some things are best left forgotten.

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“We are excited to partner with such an experienced studio team to bring the world we created to live action and ignite the imagination of audiences across the globe,” said Black Salt Games’ Nadia Thorne, Joel Mason, Alex Ritchie and Michael Bastiaens in a statement.

Story Kitchen’s Dmitri M. Johnson, Mike Goldberg, Dan Jevons and Timothy I. Stevenson said, “’Dredge’ is a captivatingly eerie and profoundly rich story that had us completely hooked from the very beginning!”

“Dredge” was released in March 2023 by the New Zealand-based team at Black Salt Games. Within the first 24 hours, the game sold over 100,000 copies, and went on to move over 1 million units. Its first downloadable content (DLC), “The Pale Reach,” was released in November, and another upcoming DLC, “The Iron Rig,” will be released this year.

“Dredge” was nominated for best indie game at the Golden Joystick Awards and The Game Awards, and is currently nominated for four BAFTA awards.

Black Salt Games is repped by Greenberg Glusker Fields Claman & Machtinger LLP. Story Kitchen is repped by WME, Simon Pulman and Briana Hill at Pryor Cashman Sherman & Flynn LLP and TriplePoint PR.

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‘Back To Black’ Review: A Refreshingly Honest Look At The Short, Troubled Life Of Amy Winehouse

By Damon Wise

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Focus Features Sets Early Summer 2024 Release For Amy Winehouse Biopic ‘Back To Black’

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What not be immediately apparent is that Back to Black is the story as seen through the singer’s own eyes, which is a very smart way of dodging the bullets that accompany any attempt to tell her rise-and-fall story. Although there is a LOT of foreshadowing in Matt Greenhalgh’s script (when her beloved Nan refuses a cigarette, you know exactly what’s coming), this isn’t a retread of Asif Kapadia’s almost forensic documentary Amy , which turned the tables on the accepted narrative of Winehouse as willing tabloid fodder. Instead, it actually indulges some of her self-sabotaging behavior, which may seem reckless but doesn’t seem to have tarnished any of the male members of the 27 club.

It’s a measure of Winehouse’s accelerated life that it only takes 20 minutes to take us from a family party to her debut album and the first blush of fame. Even then, she is headstrong, stonewalling her management’s insistence that she stop playing her guitar onstage (although she did later drop it altogether) and taking time out to live her life and find new material for songs from that lived experience (although one of her biggest hits was a cover of The Zutons’ song “Valerie” in 2007). Interestingly, all these contradictions start to add up, especially when Winehouse goes from saying, “Class-A drugs are for mugs,” to smoking crack cocaine, which is quite radical in itself for a biopic but also signals, in a very honest way, that we are never going to get to the bottom of this story.

The meat of the film, but not the focus, is Winehouse’s relationship with Blake Fielder-Civil, who gets off so very, very lightly. Played by Jack O’Connell, “Blakey” is the catalyst that sparks the singer’s very public descent into drink and drug-addled infamy (“You’ve got an eye for the bad boys,” says Nan, which is putting it mildly). But, again, Taylor-Johnson plays an interesting game with the truth here; it’s all very well to wonder where the adults were — and her naïve father Mitch pays off a lot of bad press in that regard, thanks to a very touching performance by Eddie Marsan — but these decisions were her own, and Taylor-Johnson makes that a tentpole, which — again — runs counter to the sexist “candle in the wind” narrative that grows up around so-called “difficult” female artists.

At the heart of it is relative newcomer Marisa Abela , who excels when she’s free of delivering expositional biopic dialogue and just being Amy Winehouse (a brief, verité-style sequence on the streets of Manhattan is quite breathtaking). In those moments, we get a sense of Amy Winehouse on the rise, a superhero origins story in which certain elements coalesce to produce the elegantly surly, coifed and tatted icon represented on the poster (although the film hedges its bets as to whether the famous beehive was inspired by The Shangri-Las’ Mary Weiss or The Ronettes’ Ronnie Spector).

Given the material, Back to Black bows out on an unexpectedly minor key, which is probably better than a queasy Queen of Hearts payoff. In that respect it’s an unusual film, in that it doesn’t quite boil down to any one thing: it’s not about fame, it’s not about money, it’s not (really) about addiction. It does, however, paint an unexpectedly complex portrait of an artist who, over the years, has largely been portrayed in broad and patronizing strokes, much like the tattoo of Betty Boop she wore on her back. The musical biopic format doesn’t quite do it justice, but it would make one hell of an opera.

Title: Back To Black Distributor: Focus Features Release date: May 17, 2024 Director: Sam Taylor-Johnson Screenwriter: Matt Greenhalgh Cast: Marisa Abela, Jack O’Connell, Eddie Marsan, Lesley Manville Rating: R Running time: 2 hr 2 min

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