In a new Blumhouse horror film set to premiere next month, Black Phone has reached a perfect 100 percent rating on Rotten Tomatoes. The film is based on Joe Hill's short story of the same name from 2004, and was directed by Scott Derrickson with Jason Blum as producer. The movie is being praised by experts for exceeding "very high expectations."
Source: the black phone rotten tomatoes
Source: Universal Pictures
Director Scott Derrickson comes back to his terror origins and collaborates one more time with the leading brand in the category, Blumhouse, to introduce a brand new horror movie.
A vicious killer kidnaps Finney Shaw, a shy but bright 13-year-old kid, imprisoning him under a soundproof cellar where shouting is almost useless. Finney then realizes that he can hear the voice of the prior victims of his abductor, when a disconnected phone hanging on the wall starts ringing. And the victims are dead set on preventing Finney from suffering the same fate as them.
Source: Universal Pictures
“Starring four-time Oscar® nominee Ethan Hawke in the most terrifying role of his career and introducing Mason Thames in his first-ever film role, The Black Phone is produced, directed, and co-written by Scott Derrickson, the writer-director of Sinister, The Exorcism of Emily Rose and Marvel’s Doctor Strange.”
The picture is produced by Derrickson, Jason Blum and C. Robert Cargill, while Universal and Blumhouse are responsible for its distribution.
Source: Universal Pictures
The film earned a wave of positive reviews after its international premiere at Fantastic Fest in late 2021, and now boasts a fresh 100 percent Rotten Tomatoes rating.
The Black Phone, according to Marisa Mirabal of IndieWire, is a 'sleek, stressful, and violent zeitgeist of a horror film,' capturing the audience's sentiments as rapidly as the movie’s villain abducts kids in broad daylight.
Source: Universal Pictures
The antagonist was described by Eric Vespe from Slash Film as a ‘mask-wearing psycho’, who is portrayed with ‘exceptional relish and devotion’ by Hawke. Vespe also complimented young newcomer Thames, who 'absolutely knocks it out of the park here, carrying the movie with confidence and a sense of reality that you need in order to make the supernatural stuff hit home'.
Vespe continued to say that Derrickson and his team took a lovely little horror premise from a really short short story, and succeeded in broading it using methods that are really feasible, without making audience feel like filler.
Source: Universal Pictures
In the meantime, IGN’s Amelia Emberwing believed that the film seemed like the cousin of Derrickson and Cargill’s 2012 horror movie Sinister, which featured Hawke as well. However, Emberwing deduced that somehow it incredibly exceeded great expectations in practically all aspects.
"The writing/directing combination brilliantly showcases the problems of children in the '70s and the very real monsters of our world," Emberwing commented, "while the performances of the young actors Mason Thames and Madeleine McGraw push the already tight plot to new heights."
On the 24th of June, The Black Phone will be released in UK and US theaters.
