the black phone movie
'The Black Phone': The prayer to fight the monsters
Ethan Hawke stars in a thriller about a child abductor
The urban setting of the late 1970s that "The Black Phone" portrays is so hostile and so violent that the appearance of a masked man who kidnaps children and later murders them can only be a logical consequence of those tensions where violence proliferates. hatred, bullying and alcoholism.
The protagonists are two brothers, Finney (13 years old) and Gwen (12 years old). Both support a widowed father, consumed by alcohol and loss, which drive him to the anger and whipping of his children (but the father will end up going through his own process of guilt and redemption).
The boy often has problems with the bullies at school. He and the girl also often witness other boys fighting after class. They watch scary movies on television and want to go to the movies to see the horror premieres. In the streets they stumble upon signs asking for help finding missing children. Everything seems to give off restlessness and evil.
Gwen's religious tools
In such harsh territory, Finney doesn't know how to navigate, except by hiding when the thugs look for him or keeping quiet when an answer may involve more violence. Gwen, on the other hand, has her own fighting weapons sheltered inside a dollhouse : the New Testament, a crucifix, a rosary, a picture of the Virgin Mary and a kind of wooden fish with the letters JESUS on its back. she.
At night, with the cross in her hand and on her knees, she asks Jesus to help her have dreams. Because the girl's dreams are premonitory: while she was sleeping she saw a man with black balloons driving a van and kidnapping a boy who later really disappeared. The police have found black balloons in the place where it happened. She prays one night to have those dreams again, which may provide her with a clue to the whereabouts of one of her brother's friends, who recently disappeared.
The Raptor: a magician with a demon mask
One morning in broad daylight, Finney bumps into a magician getting out of a van marked ABRACADABRA. The man carries black balloons and kidnaps the boy. He then locks him in a basement where there is a pallet and a black telephone attached to the wall, which he says “doesn't work”. The individual is a kidnapper and serial killer, nicknamed by the press The Raptor (Ethan Hawke, whose face we barely get to see).
He usually covers his face with masks that represent demons. In moments of solitude, while he awaits torture or perhaps death, Finney begins to receive calls from that black receiver. On the other end of the phone, the spirits of the murdered children speak to him. With each call, the boys provide clues for him to try to escape from that mousetrap.
Each of the brothers fights in his own way against the monster. Gwen prays and asks Jesus to give her dream clues. Finney listens to the ghosts and finally begins to act, instead of standing still. And their father begins to feel guilty and to change: he knows that he can lose one of his children and he is desperate.
In fact, his new film is not really scary: but it is disturbing, unsettling, it provides the unease typical of the kidnapping theme, and its narrative is solid, because in reality it not only talks about the misdeeds of a murderer, it also portrays a society in which many evils and too much intolerance still prevailed.
The calls in the film work both ways: Finney gets calls from the dead trying to help him, and Gwen calls on God for help. She symbolizes hope in such a sordid and violent environment.
