
2/10 The Black Phone is this year’s Malignant, and that is not a compliment. It is a bizarre, incoherent mashup of several other movies and archetypes it admires but can’t come close to imitating. As a macabre circus-freak of a film, it’s required viewing, but for anyone just wanting to enjoy a movie, steer well clear.
North Denver, 1978- A serial child abductor known only as “the grabber” (Ethan Hawke) roams the gloomy North Denver suburbs, and as a new school year begins with noticeably fewer classmates, police are no closer to finding him, even though his hunting grounds are limited to a single elementary school zone. Finney Blake (Mason Thames) shelters from bullies and an abusive father as the grabber diddles all his classmates in the background until at long, long last, he’s kidnapped himself and locked in the grabber’s basement. His only resource is a disconnected black phone through which the grabber’s prior victims contact him from beyond the grave. Also, Blake’s little sister, Gwen (Madeleine McGraw) has psychic powers, and the completely incompetent Denver police feel the need to enlist her help finding the grabber. Also, there is a coked-out dude named Max (James Ransone).
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