‘The Black Phone’ is Thrilling

Even for non-horror-movie people

Mason Thames and Madeleine McGraw in The Black Phone | Universal Pictures

A spoiler-free review of The Black Phone. I’m not going to give away more than the trailer or synopsis does.

The Black Phone introduces us to Finney (Mason Thames), a young boy growing up in Denver in the 1970s. One day, he is kidnapped by The Grabber (Ethan Hawke), a sadistic serial killer. While he’s being held, Finney begins receiving mysterious phone calls on a disconnected black phone in the basement.

I’m not a big horror movie fan. I watched a ton of horror movies as a kid, and I don’t enjoy them anymore as an adult. However, there are some films that will get me to wade into the horror genre. The Black Phone is one of those — when a friend texted me saying that she had seen this twice in theaters in one week, I knew this was something I needed to see. While I would classify it as a horror movie, it could also be easily placed in the suspense or thriller genres.

While I’m not going to give a lot of the plot away in the rest of the article, if you haven’t yet seen The Black Phone, don’t keep reading. This is a good one to watch with as little information as possible. It’s currently streaming on Peacock.