30 Perfect Horror Scenes Of The 2020s
20. The Black Phone - The Beating
The most horrifying moment in The Black Phone had nothing to do with Ethan Hawke's child-abducting serial killer at all, as sinister and well-played as that character was. It was actually this unflinching depiction of child abuse, a sequence so upsetting director Scott Derrickson had to fight to keep it in the film.
In this moment, young protagonist Finney (Mason Thames) watches in horror as her alcoholic, abusive father Terence (Jeremy Davies) viscously beats his younger sister Gwen (Madeleine McGraw), as he is disturbed by Gwen's apparent psychic abilities, which her late mother had.
It's a gut-punch, but in a very good way. It shows the abuse that the two siblings live with in a way that doesn't feel exploitative at all, and Jeremy Davies, Madeleine McGraw and Mason Thames all performed this gruelling scene superbly. In an otherwise relatively conventional (though still very solid) horror film, this hauntingly upsetting moment was by far the most daring, memorable segment, as hard to watch and upsetting as it undeniably was.