The Black Phone : Together We Go.

What is interesting and thusly to me successful and amazing about Scott Derrickson's “The Black Phone” is not in its plot or it's or it's clever premise or the way it makes the most of it. It’s not in its runtime which is lean, mean, and without any fat for it's just over 1 hour and 40 minutes runtime. The story of a child serial killer who preys on a small rural community held some special moments of horror and terror for me, (especially a centerpiece scene involving a locked door) but those as always are subjective as to whom they will please. Its unique nature is also not found in any particular aspect of its horror or in this case terror, No, what makes “The Black phone” stand out most honorably and spectacularly to me is where it's focus lies, who it focuses on and who it cares for, and what it leaves us with.

In most horror films we are quite used to the idea that the central focus of the movie is the “horror” or the “terror” and whatever form that horror or terror takes, - usually embodied by whom ever the antagonist of the film is. In the Texas chainsaw massacre (which is dutifully mentioned as well as homaged to some extent) Despite his many victims leather face is the central focus of “The Texas Chainsaw Massacre”. Freddy Krueger is the central focus of “A Nightmare on Elm Street”. Jason Voorhees is the central focus of “Friday the 13th”, and Michael Meyers of “Halloween”, and on and so on it goes. But also in most horror films second only to the characters that embody terror and horror is the locale. The focus becomes where the horror and the terror takes place, whether that be in something more metaphysical like the heart or the mind, or in a physical setting like Leatherfaces’ house. It's dreams for Freddie, Camp Crystal Lake for Jason, Hell by way of a portal opening cube for Pinhead in “Hellraiser”. These locales are very specific and the evil that lives within them lives on in continuum. This is important to note because to try and contextualize or even compare “The black phone” to films like this is misguided, this movie shares DNA with them in only the most superficial of ways. The same goes for drawing comparisons from this to something like “IT” or a show like ”Stranger Things”, to which it again only bares the most basic similarities . It's most proper kin or antecedent is the two David Fincher films that so clearly influenced this year's earlier monster hit ..”The Batman”, - “Seven” and “The Zodiac”, and even in this case Fincher's other project Netflix's “Mindhunter”. Both or all of these projects are concerned with locale, setting, time and place as integral to the characters and the specific depiction of urban or rural decay. They are also most obviously set around serial killers and not monsters, though serial killers are pretty close and slasher pics share an obvious relation. The settings of those films/show were not merely decorative, and it isn’t in this one either. The late seventies early eighties is essential to setting not only mood and tone, but ethos, which powers and informs the terror and the catharsis due to come. America had by then shifted from the counter cultural revolutions that came to define the decade that preceded it and started to move comfortably back into the false security of respectability and civility while also tenderly hugging and embracing a return to faith, superstition, moral and ethnic superiority, Even as it ignored systemic racism, sexism, abuse, and worse yet apathy. When the movoe begins it too starts of nice enough, and it too is a false sense of security. A clear serene day frames a Rockwell like setting as America’s pastime plays before an enthusiastic multi-racial crowd. Our main character Finney Shaw (Mason Thames) pitches to the towns most feared hitter Bruce Yamada (Tristan Pravong) as his sister Gwen (Madeline McGraw) cheers him on. After two well placed strikes from Finney, Yamada cracks a home run over the fence much to the young Shaw’s dismay. Shaw looks defeated as Yamada rounds the bases and continues to hang his head until in a moment of great sportsmanship and solidarity Yamada comes over to let him know that he “almost had him” and that “his arm is mint”, (this will cycle back around in a somewhat inventive if not clumsy way). somewhat visibly comforted by the comment Finney stays after and sets up a bottle rocket, as Yamada rides gleefully down an empty the street nodding to neighborhood admirers as “Free Ride” by The Edgar Winter Group plays in the background..it is the last time the films characters will seem peaceful, the city clean, or it’s inhabitants particularly functional. Immediately after a black van rolls up towards Yamada the screen goes dark, credits roll revealing the rot and underbelly of a town under siege by smog, traffic, and far worse child kidnappings. From then on the film shows the rot both in terms of structure and humanity. Children are bullied, bloodied, abused, and forgotten, other folks too. Finney and Gwen's father Terence (an almost perfectly off beat as usual Jeremy Davies) seats himself early in the morning with a cup of coffee and a clear demand for silence as he reads the paper whose headline reads “COMMISSION FINDS MILITARY PENSIONS INEQUITABLE”

This minor bit of subtext goes on to become a constant in the movie about who is seen and who is unseen, who is remembered and who is forgotten and it is exemplified by how the movie goes out of its way to make the unseen seen (like making this headline visible thus illuminating the apathy towards the soldiers who came home from an unnecessary and unjust war ) and the normally seen, unseen or peripheral in text and outside of the context as a viewer we can see the people usually in the forefront of these stories (like cops) as now ancillary. Which then interweaves itself into the fabric of a story that wants to discuss or talk about a rural and urban decay its inhabitants seem unwilling to acknowledge. The black phone makes it abundanly clear in its subtext that the social institutions which are supposed to be designed to protect, to educate, and to guide its people, especially in this case children- are instead oppressing, repressing them. The parents don't parent, the detectives don’t detect, the school teachers don’t teach ( one kid remarks to Finney that his teacher fails at making math accessible and understandable). It’s untenable that children would flourish in this environment and they don't…until they do, and when they do its how that matters. It makes for a fascinating story to plant an unknowable, impenetrable, nameless terror that is inextricable in its traits and make up from the urban rural social indifference, apathy, and inattention and subsequent cruelties of the society/culture that created them. There is evidence of the cinematic genetics The Black Phone shares with Fincher’s and Reeves's films provided right within the names or rather the namelessness of their antagonists be it “John Doe”, or “The “Zodiac”, “The Riddler”, or here “The Grabber”. The namelessness of these characters be they historic or made up allows or gives them a sense of omnipresence which further emboldens their action. As no-one they can reach further, be more, terrify more deeply, they can become boundless which is in direct contradiction to the people that seek to stop them, who are rigidly defined by the institutions in which they occupy. Institutions with names and reputations, tradition, hypocrisy, and routine, but who and how the opposition foils the evil is where the black phone truly excels and finds its own unique place in these stories of terror.

It is very common in these types of films to see a thread being made that nods to the idea that the predators main weapon is to be able to see the unseen. All of the grabber’s chosen victims are outcast of some sort who in some way shape or form are never truly seen. An Asian and Hispanic kid both drowned out in a completely white community. A tough white kid from outside the community uncared for and disliked by the same community. A paperboy who himself over the phone alludes to the fact that no one ever really noticed him when he was alive. In “Seven” many of John Doe's victims are the unseen and unloved, fat folks, sex workers, housewives, evil or good they are unseen. In mindhunter season 2 with the Atlanta child murders it was black children, hell even in the latest season of Stranger Things, Veccna goes after explicitly those who have been harmed and bare the marks and traits of trauma, but are also forgotten or alone. What is uncommon is for a film or a story is to refuse to rely on the very institutions which either in part or in whole, directly or indirectly play roles in the cause of the various harms to both victim and victimized - to then be the balm or the savior. “The Batman” names Batman explicitly as part of the problem and then presents him as simultaneously the balm and savior. It makes talk of an idea of a sense of the the city itself needing to be a part of its own solution, but for the most part what we see explicitly is Batman doing all of the leg work. Seven, The Zodiac, and Mindhunter also make a allusions to the idea that the FBI or the police are part and parcel of the problem even as it too presents them as simultaneously balm and savior. In the horror films that resemble the the black phone (especially slasher pics) we see that usually the savior has some identifiable trait that makes them singularly equipped to defy or handle this predator, be it the ever present falsehood of virginal purity, or being the “Chosen One” or some physical skill. In the black phone it is not about any one particular person or any one particular trait that Feeney has. While the movie has a clear through line about Feeney being able to learn to stand up for himself and to discover his own particular fight - that is directly subsequent to the connection to comradery, solidarity, and community that aids him, a community of those who have been abused, community of those who have been harmed, a sense of community so strong it reaches out from even beyond the grave. Every single advance Feeney makes towards freedom from his imprisonment, every single move he makes that counts as a small victory is the direct result of the contribution of his predecessors. The people who protect Feeney, the people who help him discover his own power, are singularly and only those who themselves have been victimized or count as future targets. He has a friend who in life and in death directly protects him and guides him towards freedom not only in the sense of the escape from his predicament, but escape from seeing himself in such a limited perspective. His sister Gwen is his foremost champion both when he is free and when she takes on a group of bullies, and it is she who even after being beat by their father Terence for mentioning and using her clairvoyant ability , does not hesitate to use it to find her brother. The power of the black phone is not only that it centers the power of community, but also that it centers its victims rather than centralizing the victimizer or the abusers or those who are part and parcel to the urban and rural decay that surrounds these children. The film spends much of its time showing the victims lives whether it be in play or in various forms of socializing, and it carries itself not on the terror of the evil, but the impact of it on a city and its victims. It spends very little time explaining “The Grabber” though it is extremely clear he himself has been abused, and this does not seem to be done for the purpose of avoiding empathizing with the killer, but more-so so that it can be far more concerned with spending its ever dissipating runtime with the stories of the victims. Though the film is most certainly terrifying and anxiety ridden, those tensions are not built purely on jump scares or even geography, and proximity to the killer, ( through that too is there ) but the anxiety of whether or not these underserved children will be enough of a match for this omnipotent evil, and it is then that it surprises us with maybe its biggest one-up on those films.. That it suggests without impediment or help from the forces we depend on in real life of story and without qualm that the heart is enough, that fight is enough, that they are enough …together that is.