It's 1978 and middle school aged children are disapering from a suburb north of Denver, victims of a fiend locals have dubbed 'The Graber'. 'The Graber' is Ethan Hawk and his latest abductee is 13 year old Finny (Mason Thames). Extra sensory ability runs in Finny's family, his younger sister Gwen (Madeline McGraw) has prophetic dreams, much to their fathers chagrin as their late mother also had such visions and they drove her mad. For Finny the supernatural manifests when he starts getting calls from 'The Graber's' previous victims on a disconnected black phone on the wall of his basement prison, and those spirits want to help him escape.
The film suffers some from the recent glut of period piece YA horror, 'It', 'Fear Street', even 'Stranger Things', however it's pretty strong. Based on a short story by Stephen King's son Joe Hill, the movie is very well structured, acted, gets the period setting down and doesn't over explain things, I was impressed. 'The Black Phone' did extremely well, over $160 million off a roughly $17 million budget, critically it's an 82% on Rotten Tomatoes. I went into this with some reluctance, but I enjoyed and am glad I saw it. ***
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