THE BLACK PHONE
▸ RELEASED OUT NOW!
15 | 103 minutes
▸ Director Scott Derrickson
▸ Cast Ethan Hawke, Mason Thames, Jeremy Davies, Madeleine McGraw
The number of films and TV shows based on works by Stephen King runs into scores, if not hundreds. His son Joe Hill, in contrast, has barely a handful on his CV, with only Daniel Radcliffe’s 2013 vehicle Horns making much of an impression.
If is anything to go by, though, Hill’s, this smart, taut and scary chiller builds on a killer premise (’70s kid gets abducted by neighbourhood child-slayer) by adding a supernatural bonus (basement prison comes with phone that connects kid to murderer’s earlier victims). Throw in a rare bad guy turn from Ethan Hawke and director Scott Derrickson’s return to his horror roots becomes something even rarer: a genre film with a brain, a pulse and a surprising amount of heart.
