The Black Phone is a bone-chilling, atmospheric horror movie

If you hear that familiar trill ringing and ringing and ringing, all the bone-chilling vibes of The Black Phone is going to come rushing back, and you might just find yourself casting your eye around for ghost kids.

Directed by Scott Derrickson, the atmospheric and unnerving horror movie doesn’t just have literal scares, it effectively taps into our primal fears about menacing predators in all forms. That’s why it burrows into your consciousness.

The bogeyman with the mask is terrifying, no doubt, but he’s also a character who is clearly human and what he is and what he represents is the kind of thing that disrupts sleep. Because there’s nothing scarier than the worst things humans are capable of.

Which is not to say The Black Phone is merely a movie that looks to scar and traumatise because at the heart of it is a story about the best things humans are capable of.

Derrickson’s weaving of that conflict, that eternal fight between good and evil if you wanted to be prosaic, is what underpins and drives The Black Phone. And it’s a brilliantly balanced narrative with the right amount of trauma and redemption.

Based on Joe Hill’s short story but also drawing on inspiration from his own childhood – jeepers – Derrickson co-wrote the script with C. Robert Cargill (the pair had previously penned Sinister and Sinister 2).

It’s Derrickson’s personal touch that elevates The Black Phone because while the story is centred on a serial killer who abducts and murders children, there’s a lot of texture in this world which is almost as frightening.

That’s the stuff Derrickson coloured in – the abusive, absent and neglectful parenting, the rampant bullying and violence. The kids here are always bleeding or bruised from being kicked and belted, and that’s before The Grabber shows up.

Set in an American town in the 1970s, The Black Phone anchors itself in a community besieged by a slate of abducted children. There are missing posters plastered all over the chain link fences, smiling faces looking back from photos frozen in time.

Finney (Mason Thames) and his sister Gwen (Madeleine McGraw) live with their alcoholic dad (Jeremy Davies) who has a violent temper when he drinks. Their house is one ruled by fear while Finney is also bullied at school.

When Finney is taken by The Grabber (Ethan Hawke), he wakes up in a locked basement with nothing but a soiled mattress and a disconnected phone on the wall. When the phone inexplicably rings, Finney picks it up and is more than a little surprised to find the voices of the missing – and now – dead kids from the posters.

Up top, Gwen is racing around trying to find her brother, spurred on by her psychic dreams, trying to piece together opaque clues from her subconsciousness. She’s spirited in more ways than one, a spitfire who has no qualms about challenging adult authority (outside of her own home).

Derrickson infuses in these two young characters the hope that there is a better way and that you don’t have to accept the crappy hand you’ve been dealt – such is the optimism symbolised by youth.

That’s why The Black Phone is more nuanced than your average scary flick. It weaponises the fear that comes from being powerless and pours it into not just the murderous masked villain with the frightening voice and even more terrible intent but shows you a way out, a way to reclaim your power.

Rating: 4/5

The Black Phone is in cinemas now

Originally published as The Black Phone is a bone-chilling, atmospheric horror movie