‘The Black Phone’ Review: Ethan Hawke in a Serial-Killer Movie with Some Nightmare Images but Less Fear Than Meets the Eye
19.06.2022 - 11:17
/ variety.com
Owen Gleiberman Chief Film CriticEthan Hawke, in 30 years, has never portrayed a villain before, so it would be nice to say that in “The Black Phone” he not only plays a serial killer — one of those anonymous madmen who live in a one-story house of dingy brick with a dungeon in the basement — but that he makes something memorable out of it. His mask is certainly disturbing.
Hawke’s character, who is known as the Grabber, is a kidnapper of teenage boys, to whom he presumably does unspeakable things. He drives a black ’70s van with the word Abracadabra written on the side of it, and when he pops out of the vehicle to yank his victims off the street, he’ll be wearing a magician’s hat or carrying some black balloons.
But it’s not until we see him in his home element that we take in the full hideous grandeur of that mask, which comes in removable sections and looks almost like it’s been chiseled in stone: sometimes it’s got a leering smile, sometimes a frown, and sometimes he just wears the lower half of it. That this is Hawke’s debut as a character of evil is one of the principal hooks of “The Black Phone.” Yet serial-killer films, or at least the good ones, tend to have a certain dark mystery to them.
By the time Hawke shows up in “The Black Phone,” in an odd way we feel like we already know him.The movie is set in North Denver in 1978, which seems like the perfect setting for a serial-killer movie, especially since it colors in the era with a quota of convincing detail. We meet Finney (Mason Thames), the doleful, long-haired 13-year-old hero, when he’s pitching a Little League game; after he gives up the game-winning home run, we see the teams shuffle past each other, shaking hands and saying “Good game, good game” — a
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