The film begins in the despairing community of a suburban town amid an ongoing police manhunt of various ‘missing’ kids with posters and uneasy parents (1970s, it would appear).
Finney Shaw (Mason Thames) is a sensitive shy schoolboy eluding school bullies and an abusive alcoholic father, especially abusive to his sister Gwen (Madeleine McGraw) who has clairvoyant dreams, which the father is eager to suppress. Some of these scenes were difficult to watch.
Soon enough, the kidnapper (Ethan Hawke) – in the guise of an friendly masked magician – grabs the boy, renders him unconscious and throws him into the back of his van (van trade name: “abracadabra”). That is how Finney wakes up from a slumber on a dirty mattress of a barren and sound-proof basement.
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The Black Phone is an intense experience. The level of suspense, tension and anticipation rises steadily throughout the movie, like the turning of an oven knob. Watching this on the big screen, there were moments where I had to hold my breath. At home, I am the sort who pauses a movie for a brief respite.
The reason for the intensity is because Scott Derrickson doesn’t waste any time exploring the ‘background’ or the psychology of the maniac (the whys? and the hows?) or other tangential storylines. This is a much needed effect.
Nowadays, the central philosophy in movies is the attempt to 'rationalise' the villain. It's a social commentary based on the regnant cultural view that people aren’t born innately evil. As such, movie studios, tend to eschew anything remotely veering on “pure evil”. Instead, the villain is cast as the product of social or economic woes that have contorted them into misshapen tragic victims in their own right. I intensely dislike this pervasive motif; from Hannibal Lecter in Hannibal Rising, Emma Stone’s Cruella De Ville, to Angelina Jolie’s Maleficent. The attempt in all these cases is to ‘contextualise’ the villain. They are not born diabolically wicked or psychopathically evil – but are merely reacting to the harsh and unforgiving world around them. The villains are objects in need of our affection, kindness and understanding. The recent blockbuster endeavour – in Cruella – to redeem and ‘humanise’ a villain’s goal of murdering hundreds of adorable puppies for the mere want of a fur-coat, as anything other than deranged evil, is an illustration of this absurdity.
Returning to The Black Phone, Derrickson doesn’t explore the psychology of the kidnapper. Instead, Finney, in that basement, is the cynosure of the cinematic experience. It’s in that basement that Finney discovers the spirits of his former schoolfriends.
Also, the movie does pivot to Gwen and her own home terrors. As already mentioned, she does seem to have inherited the gift of clairvoyance from her mother. But, because of her mother’s death, her drunken father condemns this preternatural powers in the hopes of subduing it. Derrickson makes Gwen the movie’s steadfast beacon of compassion and indomitability in her determination to find, and help, her brother.
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Hawke’s performance adds degrees to the chill factor. Despite wearing that demented all-encompassing comedia del arte mask, which would obviously impede normal vocalisation and enunciation, he manages to add guttural layers so that he can switch from being relatively human-like, if perhaps unstable, to the unalloyed depths of psychopathic sadism.
The mask itself is a fascinating object in the movie which seems to have a psychological hold over him. Ethan’s character, at various points, removes distinct portions of the mask so that, at different points, at least some his aspect remains concealed. But, when the mask is fully removed, he appears to recoil and shriek. Why does being fully denuded exact such a psychological toll? It’s an interesting thought.
In the end, The Black Phone works superbly by focusing and amping up the stifling unease and suspense in a confined atmosphere. The ticking of the clock is interlaced with jumps and startles of the supranatural.
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