Finney Blake is a quiet 13-year-old growing up in a Denver suburb where several local boys have disappeared. Their abductor, known as the Grabber, targets children before vanishing without leaving much behind for police to follow.
Finney eventually becomes his next victim.
Kidnapped and locked inside a soundproof basement, Finney finds himself alone with little obvious hope of escape. On the wall hangs a disconnected black telephone that the Grabber tells him does not work.
Then it rings.
The callers are the Grabber’s previous victims. Each knows something about the basement, their captor, or an escape attempt that failed. Through their fragmented advice, Finney begins piecing together what others tried before him and what he might be able to do differently.
Ethan Hawke stars as the Grabber, with Mason Thames as Finney and Madeleine McGraw as his younger sister Gwen. Gwen also appears to have a supernatural connection to the disappearances, experiencing dreams that may contain clues about where the missing children were taken.
Directed by Scott Derrickson and based on the short story by Joe Hill, The Black Phone combines kidnapping and serial killer horror with a supernatural story about the dead reaching back to help someone who is still alive.
Much of the film remains confined to the Grabber’s basement, where Finney has to learn from the children who came before him while finding the courage and resourcefulness to survive his own encounter with their killer.
Why The Black Phone Is on Love of Gothic
The Black Phone combines serial killer horror with ghosts, psychic visions, childhood trauma, death, and communication with the dead. Its supernatural elements gradually become intertwined with Finney’s attempts to survive the very human threat holding him captive.
The Grabber’s changing masks also give the film a distinctive horror image, while the basement and disconnected telephone create a confined setting where objects take on increasingly unsettling meanings.
Its mixture of supernatural horror, darker psychological themes, and serial killer fiction places The Black Phone comfortably within the darker cinema represented on Love of Gothic.