The Black Phone Review: 6 Ups & 4 Downs

Downs...

4. The Story's Simplistic, Repetitive Execution

There's little denying the inherent creativity of The Black Phone's premise - of a kidnap victim using a mysterious phone within the kidnapper's basement to contact his victims and heed their advice for escaping.

It's a killer idea and one wide open for an imaginative, consistently surprising horror film, and so it's a tad disappointing that this script really only feels like it scratches the surface of the concept's genius.

The interactions between Finney and the prior victims of the kidnapper known as the Grabber don't evolve much beyond simple slivers of advice about the basement he's held within.

The idea of Finney learning from the collective experiences of the Grabber's previous victims is great, but these conversations don't really take advantage of the basement's geography in any particularly interesting or creative ways.

As a result the phone call conceit becomes repetitive rather quickly, and little effort is made to ramp up the urgency or nature of the calls throughout.

Again, this is a great idea for a horror movie, but just lacking the spark that would help take it to the next level.