[Demdike@Cult Labs]

Originally Posted by Frankie Teardrop

THE BLACK PHONE – The black phone in question is down in Ethan Hawke’s cellar. He plays a nefarious child killer known as ‘The Grabber’, who is also equipped with black balloons and a black van. The interesting thing about the black phone is that it seems to pick up the ghostly voices of The Grabber’s victims, which is useful for Finney after he ends up in creepo’s basement as his predecessors decide to help him out by ringing in advice from beyond the grave. I enjoyed ‘The Black Phone’. I always think of the seventies as being full of unrealistically garish colours, but the makers of BP bring us down to earth and remind us that everything looked a bit beigey back then. It’s a more convincing colour scheme than that of your typical latter-day fake grindhouse effort. More than that, the film has a strange fairy tale quality about it, something almost a bit mythic maybe. At points, especially at the end, I half wondered whether the whole thing was a fantasy solely within the mind of Finn, a sort of daydream about escaping an ogre’s cave that might be useful in coping day to day with his domineering dad. And what about his psychic sister? How random. But BP isn’t about ontological puzzles at the end of the day, it’s more of a window on the toxicity of times and places people often seem to prefer to get dewy-eyed about, and also there’s perhaps slightly inevitable stuff about the dark side of masculine identity. Solid effort all round and a recommend from me.

I was interested in seeing this but you've kinda put me off now.