NOTE: This is a new release and the review is based off a theatre viewing. This means the review won’t feature common elements like visual analysis, extended theme analysis, or long-form discussions of the cinematic techniques being used. Once I am able to get a copy of the movie to watch, pause, analyze, and get stills from the review will be updated to match the current site’s standard.
A Little League baseball game is underway. The pitcher, Finney (Mason Thames), winds up and throws the ball. The batter, Bruce (Tristan Pravong), swings and misses. Strike one. The crowd cheers for Finney and he can feel their approval hanging in the balance.
He winds up and throws again. Strike two. The crowd’s encouragement increases. A girl within the crowd stares at Finney with affection. He takes notice; the pressure is on.
The ball leaves his hand on the third throw but this time Bruce is ready for it; the bat connects with the ball and it soars over the gates – a homerun. Suddenly, the momentum flips and Bruce becomes the recipient of the adulation while Finney is relegated to the periphery.
We follow Bruce as he leaves the field, glowing in victory. Edgar Winters’ “Free Ride” plays evoking a feeling of jubilation. But then a black van enters the frame and the color and sound begin to fade leaving an all-consuming void in its wake – the happy façade breaks to reveal the grotesque underbelly.
Mark Korven’s unsettling score complete with a rhythmic pulse and discordant fluctuations starts to play as the title credits start to play – it’s time to enter the dark. This montage is presented in an aesthetic fashion similar to director Scott Derickson’s previous horror film, Sinister, utilizing the grainy texture of film stock proper to accentuate the uncanny series of images. In strong contrast to the opening’s evocation of a cheery 70’s milieu, the decisive switch in aesthetic and tone is a grim reminder of the horrors of the time lurking in wait – kidnappings and missing children on milk cartons, and the like.
It’s from this fractured backdrop that we join Finney once again. He’s revealed to be a prime target of hostile forces all around. From a drunk, violent father at home to bullies at school, Finney is constantly forced into compromising positions where he finds himself wholly at the whims of other parties; even when he’s bailed out of the awful situations he finds himself in, it’s due to the efforts of his friend Robin (Cazarez Mora) and his sister Gwen (Madeleine McGraw) intervening on his behalf. His own sense of agency is sorely lacking.
But when he’s kidnapped by a serial child abductor referred to as the “Grabber” (Ethan Hawke), Finney is forced to abandon his passivity and discover his strengths or die trying. He finds himself trapped in a seemingly isolated and sound-proofed basement structure with no tools in sight sans a broken telephone attached on the wall. Yet, while the phone isn’t plugged into any power source and seems completely busted up, it still rings, serving as an conduit to unseen forces from the beyond who seek to intervene in the seemingly impossible situation.
The supernatural propels the narrative forward, operating on a mostly demonstrative, seldom explained layer that works to supplement the true-crime horror narrative. While the presentation of this material feels like an extension of Sinister in tone and feel, its use is more in line with Derrickson’s earlier supernatural procedural, The Exorcism of Emily Rose. Like that film, otherworldly phenomena – grainy dream-sequences and spectral sightings – are couched within ambiguities which gestures towards multiple different angles of interpretation. This explicative restraint works in the films favor as it lets the characters’ struggles take focus; the supernatural set-pieces are just pieces of connective tissue that characters find themselves working with and through and are not the cause of interest in end of themselves.
The primary source of scares comes from Hawke’s “Grabber”, an masked man teetering on the edge of an emotional meltdown. At one moment he’s coy and wants to play nice. At another he’s downright malicious and one step away from a violent explosion. For every persona, he dons a new mask on, accentuating his instability and giving Hawke ample opportunity to flex his facial muscles in new, menacing configurations. The uncertainty behind what he wants adds to the suffocating feeling as his erratic behavior presents a minefield for Finney to traverse through.
However, while Finney finds himself powerless at the start of the film, he quickly finds himself changing for what the situation calls. His experiences dealing with abuse in more grounded scenarios helps him play the Grabber’s inexplicable games as the latter’s acts just feels like an amplification of the atrocities he’s used to dealing with. Thus, his progression is clearly demarcated; the film uses its opening to demonstrate where Finney struggles and then utilizes the supernatural trappings of his struggle with the Grabber to highlight his growth.
The film does misstep slightly when it comes to wrapping up all the relevant story threads as the manner by which certain narrative parallels made between the domestic and horrific conclude seem incongruous with one another, but the overwhelming momentum of how Finney’s arc culminates more than buoys the issue.
REPORT CARD
TLDR
The Black Phone is Scott Derrickson’s best film as of yet and seems him combining the aesthetic sensibilities and sense of unease from Sinister with the narrative ambiguity and supernatural restraint of The Exorcism of Emily Rose. The result is a tense, supernatural, character-driven story that earns its shocks.
Rating
8.9/10
Grade
A
Go to Page 2 for the spoiler discussion and more in-depth analysis. Go to Page 3 to view this review’s progress report .
A family is tied to a tree. A family is hung to death on a tree. The title card for Sinister scratches into the celluloid. The film’s opening sets the gritty tone with a home video from hell. A family hung by an unseen force on grainy footage that hearkens back to an older time. This sentimental past is brutalized by a senseless violence – a violence that the film “signs” off on.
A projector starts up and the guttural mechanical sounds of its inner workings cloud the soundscape. Super 8 footage emits from the unseen machine depicting a family, each member of which has their head covered by a bag, being hung on a tree. The gritty footage is augmented by the abrasive noises of the projector – the footage takes on a disturbing home-made quality. Every member of the domestic unit is executed when a tree branch is cut by an entity not shown on the screen. As the family’s feet stop moving, the title card crops up in the lower right corner of the frame, as if etched out against the grain of the celluloid.
The sheriff (Fred Thompson) accosts Elliot (Ethan Hawke). Tracy (Juliet Rylance) questions Elliot (Ethan Hawke) regarding the altercation. Elliot (Ethan Hawke) notices the tree from the opening short film. Ethan’s character is quickly revealed: he’s a writer with a penchant for pissing off the people in charge and he’s willing to do whatever he needs to do get to the heart of his stories, even if it means moving his family to a house where the previous occupants had been murdered.
Post title sequence, the viewer is introduced to the film’s protagonist, Ellison (Ethan Hawke), a writer moving to a new house in an effort to find materials to publish a new best-seller. However, his move is interrupted by a sheriff (Fred Thompson) who accosts him and gives the audience Ellison’s relevant backstory: the writer published a best-seller but struck out with his subsequent novels which not only painted law enforcement as incompetent but also incorrectly assessed the nature of situations being documented. It becomes clear that this current book is Ellison’s attempt at striking gold once more after a set of failures.
Before leaving, the sheriff mentions that Elliot’s pursuits will only bring up answers that no one wants to know and that his decision to move into the house he’s chosen is disrespectful in light of the circumstances surrounding the disappearance. Both warning and condemnation alike are ignored by Elliot who waives the sheriff off. This interaction is noted by Ellison’s wife, Tracy (Juliet Rylance), who asks her husband what the altercation was about. She hesitatingly questions if the house the family has moved into is next to a murder site again, implying that Elliot has made the family move to dangerous locations before. He assuages her concerns and confirms the house is not neighboring a murder location. But as he stares at the same broken tree from the snuff film from the opening, it becomes clear that he’s moved his family into an abyss where a family was hung. Far from keeping the family some proximity away from the terrors of his investigative work, he’s brought them right into the heart of darkness.
A scorpion rattles Elliot. Elliot (Ethan Hawke) , Tracy (Juliet Rylance) , and their children sit at the table surrounded by darkness. Elliot (Ethan Hawke) starts the Super-8 footage. A family sits in an idyllic picnic setting. Elliot (Ethan Hawke) is disturbed by the footage……as the family is hung on the tree. Ethan’s decision to put his family at the heart of darkness can be immediately felt in the brutally dark lighting. The moment he finds the tapes, dread sets in. The opening has primed us for homegrown horrors and the tape confirms as much, showcasing the transformation of an idyllic family image into a monstrous nightmare.
The all-encompassing evil surrounding his family makes its appearance felt as the four-person unit eats dinner in complete black. They don’t know what Elliot has dragged them into and act in total bliss, unaware of the abyss slowly encroaching from all around. Unfortunately, this façade is one doomed to collapse as Elliot discovers when he goes upstairs to do some unpacking. He notices a black scorpion near a box filled with super 8 film reels. Suddenly, the title sequence rears its ugly head again – the scorpion becomes an emissary of terrible things to come.
Alas, Elliot is unaware of these connections and takes the box of “home videos” downstairs after trying to dispatch the scorpion. He goes into his private study, far from the eyes of his family, and starts to play the tapes. At first, the super 8 footage depicts a peaceful domestic image; a family plays around while having a joyous looking picnic. However, this idyllic image is shattered as the jittery footage cuts to the title sequence’s footage – it becomes clear that this cheerful family is the same one the viewer saw being hung. Now, Elliot has seen the same. Now, the tree in his backyard seems all the more ominous. Now, evil has made its presence brazenly known.
The tree covers the moon. Elliot (Ethan Hawke) looks at the tree. The tree looks down upon Elliot (Ethan Hawke). Upon watching the video, Elliot is drawn to the tree and it seems to communicate to him, warning him about the impending danger.
Perturbed by the experience, Elliot goes outside to check on the tree and is confronted by its looming presence. It’s as if the spirits of the family still linger from where they were executed, warning Elliot of what’s to come. Nevertheless, he persists and goes back to his study to continue investigating the demented home films.
The carnage is displayed on Elliot’s (Ethan Hawke) glasses. Elliot (Ethan Hawke) calls the police. Elliot (Ethan Hawke) looks at copies of Kentucky blood. The bloodshed of the tapes proves too much for Elliot and he goes to call the police and bring in official help, but then the red from the tapes becomes replaced with the red of his best-selling book and his convictions shift again; fame is worth more than anything and to jeopardize that for the public good is foolhardy. This is Elliot’s Faustian deal.
But the footage proves to be too much. Each film he watches follows the same pattern – a peaceful vision of a family which is followed by their gruesome execution. Finally, the violence erupts and totally breaks Elliot down. Shocked and disgusted, he takes out phone and dials the police, ready to get legal enforcement in on an issue which seems to be more heinous than he previously imagined.
And then he stops. He looks up and sees a stack of his bestseller, Kentucky Blood, sitting perched on a shelf under a bright light, a limelight from a past age. The decadent red color of the books entrance Elliot; within them, he sees this case as a chance at being great all over again. The allure of greatness takes precedence over all else, and he turns the phone off. A decision made that cannot be undone.
This is the heart of Sinister and where the film excels: the story of a writer pursuing the restoration of his status at all else, making a Faustian deal with to get back in the limelight. The film spends the entirety of its run-time with Elliot as he attempts to discover the root of the mystery, the reason behind the murders, and the connective tissue behind the tapes. The more he watches the found-footage films, the more he gets invested. Because we’re forced to watch with him, the same sense of morbid curiosity infects us. Even though the conclusion of each tape is foregone, there’s a horrific spell cast that makes it impossible to avert the eyes from the screen. It’s in these moments, watching a man watch horror films, that Sinister manages to unnerve the most. The true crime feeling gives the supernatural events captured on the home videos gone wrong a palpable malevolence – they’re meanspirited and get under the skin because of how vicious and unforgiving they are.
These moments gain their power not from gore but from their propensity at triggering the viewer’s imagination. At a fundamental level, there’s something creepy about super 8 film stock because of the way the texture of it obfuscates and “dirties” the image. There’s an uncomfortable grittiness that’s always present. Normal images are distorted enough to feel unnerving, but the hellish and inexplainable nature of what’s depicted only amplify the feeling. Sinister takes this unease and transforms it into palpable dread with its sound design. Along with the sounds of the projector, the film utilizes distortions, scratches, incomplete jumbles, demonic choral riffs, and other sonic oddities to create states of paranoia. Something is always buzzing or disconcerting enough to create worry. Because of this, the viewer is forced to think about where the noise is coming from and what it has to do with the image. There’s a fundamental disconnect between what’s going on and that sense of mystery is what generates unease and causes one’s thoughts to run wild. Like Tobe Hooper’s The Texas Chain SawMassacre, Sinister evokes the feeling that one has seen gore of the most depraved kind even when no gore has been shown purely by stimulating unconscious fears regarding the situation.
It’s precisely when the film tries to explain the nature of its supernatural set-up and remove the level of mystery that it suffers; the unconscious fears that had previously been building up fizzle out as the direct explanation of the spectral undermines the unease by which it operates. The film goes for these more overt gestures in order to engage in predictable, expendable jump-scare sequences that pad the story until it ends. In fact, once the last home movie is played, there’s a significant drop in narrative momentum, as the film becomes lost on how to effectively move the characters to the next story beat.
This should not have been the case; the terrors should have been built around and upon Elliot’s compromised relationship with his family and his obsessive pursuit of a glorious time at the cost of everything else. It is precisely in the destruction of the idyllic family life that Sinister disturbs deepest, so the larger story should have been focused more on the disintegration of the family unit in relation Elliot’s decision; however, the film only ever shows his arguments with Tracy and even those play second-fiddle to the film’s investigation into the actual nature of the supernatural mystery, which as previously mentioned, undermines what makes the film effective. Consequently, the tension that the first half excels in is lost for much of the latter portion of the film as both character and narrative momentum is squandered on cheap thrills that pale in comparison to the frights from before.
This pivot in focus is a shame because it squanders Ethan Hawke’s grounded and terrified character work which otherwise laid out a perfect foundation on which to build the film. His emphatic reactions to the home movies is part of the reason they come off as so disturbing. There’s a visceral pain he imparts upon seeing the families meet their end. But then this pain is juxtaposed against the ambition in his eyes that props up every time he’s reminded of his past. Both heaven and hell are present in his gaze and lets the viewer at least understand his character’s actions even the consequences seem disastrous.
Thankfully, the final few minutes of the film bring the narrative back to the threads that made it compelling to begin with, both subverting the the haunted house story and resolving Elliot’s arc in satisfying fashion. It’s a far cry from the potential hinted at in the opening act, but Sinister‘s craft, mood, and performance carry its uneven narrative to terrifying heights.
REPORT CARD
TLDR
Sinister starts strong as a true-crime styles supernatural thriller that follows an author going in over his head to get a story, but falters towards the end as it settles for cheap and conventional horror tactics. When the film is at it’s best, it’s truly terrifying and promises to unsettle even the most veteran of horror aficionados, but at it’s worst, the film does little more than undermine the basis of what makes it so effective. Thankfully, with an near impeccable first act, a thoroughly engaging performance by Ethan Hawke, and a perfectly poetic ending, there’s much to recommend for viewers looking for a spooky time.
Rating
8.5/10
Grade
B+
Go to Page 2for the spoiler discussion and more in-depth analysis. Go to Page 3 to view this review’s progress report .
