10 Recent Horror Movie Moments That Shocked The World
6. Gwen's Father Whips Her - The Black Phone
The Black Phone may be a horror movie centered around a serial killer, The Grabber (Ethan Hawke), who abducts and murders children from a sleepy Denver suburb, but it's also a character piece that observes the impact of trauma upon two young children.
Protagonists Finney (Mason Thames) and Gwen (Madeleine McGraw) live with their alcoholic, abusive father Terrence (played superbly by the great Jeremy Davies), with Terrence meting most of his frustrations out on his daughter.
And so, the most disturbing and unsettling scene in the movie has nothing to do with The Grabber kidnapping and killing kids, but the matter-of-fact way in which it depicts Gwen's physical abuse at the hands of her dad.
In one deeply unnerving early scene, Gwen is whipped with a belt by her irate father after her psychic abilities cause the police to come a-knocking on his door.
While most movies would cut away to another room while implying the beating through sound alone - all in the interest of "taste" - director Scott Derrickson decides instead to linger on the abuse, as Gwen wails in agony while Finney helplessly watches her be beaten.
It's an incredibly tense sequence that's terrifically acted - especially by McGraw - and yet one that just about nobody expected to see in this otherwise relatively conventional horror film.
In an interview with Bloody Disgusting, Derrickson stated that he had to fight to keep the scene in the movie:
"There's a line you can cross in dealing with children. I think that probably the riskiest scene I've shot in my career is Gwen getting whipped by her father. That was a scene... There were some people involved in the movie who asked me to take it out, and I was like, 'The movie won't work without it.' I was adamant. It's there to show the trauma [Gwen and her brother] deal with daily, but also their bond. You feel for them and how they care about each other and have each other's back in that scene. But at the same time, there was a way to do that scene that would turn everyone off."