Movies The Black Phone

Watched it last night. Had quite a few things I liked, but then some major issues that brought it way down.

I thought it looked great. The character relationships were well done. Whilst some of the acting wasn't great, there were some awesome performances (the sister with the dad, for example).

Then there was some other stuff that I didn't like as much, but the major failure IMO was that they didn't commit to an idea.
What I mean here, is that we have the kid in the basement, the bad guy, and the sister. What's the movie about? Instead of it being one main idea/plot point with supporting side views, it tries to focus on all three equally. Of course this means that instead of 1 developed and fleshed out idea, we get 3 that are incomplete and underdone.

Where this really falls down
is that the entire subplot with the psychic sister turns out to be pointless. Delete her (and the police) from the movie, and nothing changes. The boy still defeats the bad guy and escapes. The girl plotline was entirely inconsequential.

There was a moment at the end where I thought they had done something genuinely awesome with it
When the police are searching the house and finding nothing, I was wondering if the movie was doing the whole "different point in time" sort of thing and the bodies in the basement have been there for years.

For a moment I thought that, we're told the girls mother was having "dreams" but ended up killing herself. What if the psychic visions the girl was having were the same visions as her mother, the kidnapping and murders happened 30 years ago, the main boy character is actually the brother of the mother, and the sister character never actually had a brother. I was thinking about how he stands there doing nothing whilst she's being beaten and for a second thought it was a 6th Sense style thing, and he was a ghost the entire time....but then realised that wasn't possible because they'd been interacting the whole time.

That pissed me off, because I thought something like that could have been powerful as fuck. But instead, it was pointless. The girl did nothing, the second house thing was completely pointless, half the movie meant nothing.

Finishing the movie, I felt mad at them for not making something better. It had potential to be more than it was, but they turned out something ordinary instead. That bothers me more than a movie that is just straight up bad, I hate wasted potential.
 
Looks cool, I'll definitely watch it at some point.
 
legit creepy.

that scenen with him sitting in the chair with the mask and the belt. freaked me out tbh.
 
Pliny Pete said:
I just got done watching it, right off the bat I admit I did myself a disservice by not watching this in a dark theater, this movie definitely deserves the full theater expperience to draw you in and give you some scares
Still though, I thought it was pretty good, although the ending coulda been a little better
Loved the setting and the creepy atmosphere, there's something evil about the 70's and I like when movies show us that dark side laying just underneath the innocence
There were some extremely tense and anxiety filled moments in there that had me an emotional wreck which I very much enjoyed
The villain was interesting and scary and they did a good job of making you feel for the brother and sister right from the beginning, especially that poor little girl
The phone storyline was good but it woulda been better if it was more mysterious
Don't wanna give away the ending so I'll just say the tone didn't match the rest of the movie, I get what they did and appreciate how they built to it, just a little too Hollywoodish for my tastes
All in all, a pretty enjoyable movie, I see why it has so much hype around it
5.7 Thumbs Up Outta 7
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Man I finnnnallllyyyy got around to seeing the latest Jurassic Park.

A lot of people hated it, and I don’t think it was great.

The opening and getting to the damn story took way too long.

But once it got going, it was a decent flick and I like how it was action packed.

Nothing can measure up to the first, so I don’t care about that. I liked how Dobson was a POS and all the sneaking around. I popped for seeing Dr Grant and Sattler all in each other faces flirting and shit, felt good. And Dr. Malcom being an weird smart ass throughout the movie was great.

It took a while to pull me in, but shit, I had fun and so did lil Fugazy Jr.
 
legatoblues said:
Watched it last night. Had quite a few things I liked, but then some major issues that brought it way down.

I thought it looked great. The character relationships were well done. Whilst some of the acting wasn't great, there were some awesome performances (the sister with the dad, for example).

Then there was some other stuff that I didn't like as much, but the major failure IMO was that they didn't commit to an idea.
What I mean here, is that we have the kid in the basement, the bad guy, and the sister. What's the movie about? Instead of it being one main idea/plot point with supporting side views, it tries to focus on all three equally. Of course this means that instead of 1 developed and fleshed out idea, we get 3 that are incomplete and underdone.

Where this really falls down
is that the entire subplot with the psychic sister turns out to be pointless. Delete her (and the police) from the movie, and nothing changes. The boy still defeats the bad guy and escapes. The girl plotline was entirely inconsequential.

There was a moment at the end where I thought they had done something genuinely awesome with it
When the police are searching the house and finding nothing, I was wondering if the movie was doing the whole "different point in time" sort of thing and the bodies in the basement have been there for years.

For a moment I thought that, we're told the girls mother was having "dreams" but ended up killing herself. What if the psychic visions the girl was having were the same visions as her mother, the kidnapping and murders happened 30 years ago, the main boy character is actually the brother of the mother, and the sister character never actually had a brother. I was thinking about how he stands there doing nothing whilst she's being beaten and for a second thought it was a 6th Sense style thing, and he was a ghost the entire time....but then realised that wasn't possible because they'd been interacting the whole time.

That pissed me off, because I thought something like that could have been powerful as fuck. But instead, it was pointless. The girl did nothing, the second house thing was completely pointless, half the movie meant nothing.

Finishing the movie, I felt mad at them for not making something better. It had potential to be more than it was, but they turned out something ordinary instead. That bothers me more than a movie that is just straight up bad, I hate wasted potential.
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I liked it more than you (7.5/10) but I think I understand your points.

I liked having the stories spread out. That was a net positive for me.

I felt legitimately anxious for the characters at various points.

Like you, I felt there was a twist coming and I also thought it was going to be some sort of Westworld style time fuckery.

But overall, it was a really well executed film. Typical Blumhouse.
 
eddymotto said:
I liked it more than you (7.5/10) but I think I understand your points.

I liked having the stories spread out. That was a net positive for me.

I felt legitimately anxious for the characters at various points.

Like you, I felt there was a twist coming and I also thought it was going to be some sort of Westworld style time fuckery.

But overall, it was a really well executed film. Typical Blumhouse.
Click to expand...

I agree with all those points.
The parts I liked, I really liked a lot.
But the things I had a problem with, were big problems for me.

However, I'll take that any day over a movie that gives me flat nothingness in any direction.
 
Now available on Peacock (at least in some regions)

btw - generally you can watch Peacock for free. They show a few ads at the beginning and then the uninterrupted program.

THE BLACK PHONE: 2022 supernatural horror/thriller from director Scott Derrickson and co-writer C. Robert Cargill. Mason Thames stars as a kidnapped teen who somehow uses a mysterious phone in his cell to communicate with his captor's previous victims. Ethan Hawke, who previously collaborated with Derrickson and Cargill on "Sinister," co-stars. [Peacock]
 
legatoblues said:
Watched it last night. Had quite a few things I liked, but then some major issues that brought it way down.

I thought it looked great. The character relationships were well done. Whilst some of the acting wasn't great, there were some awesome performances (the sister with the dad, for example).

Then there was some other stuff that I didn't like as much, but the major failure IMO was that they didn't commit to an idea.
What I mean here, is that we have the kid in the basement, the bad guy, and the sister. What's the movie about? Instead of it being one main idea/plot point with supporting side views, it tries to focus on all three equally. Of course this means that instead of 1 developed and fleshed out idea, we get 3 that are incomplete and underdone.

Where this really falls down
is that the entire subplot with the psychic sister turns out to be pointless. Delete her (and the police) from the movie, and nothing changes. The boy still defeats the bad guy and escapes. The girl plotline was entirely inconsequential.

There was a moment at the end where I thought they had done something genuinely awesome with it
When the police are searching the house and finding nothing, I was wondering if the movie was doing the whole "different point in time" sort of thing and the bodies in the basement have been there for years.

For a moment I thought that, we're told the girls mother was having "dreams" but ended up killing herself. What if the psychic visions the girl was having were the same visions as her mother, the kidnapping and murders happened 30 years ago, the main boy character is actually the brother of the mother, and the sister character never actually had a brother. I was thinking about how he stands there doing nothing whilst she's being beaten and for a second thought it was a 6th Sense style thing, and he was a ghost the entire time....but then realised that wasn't possible because they'd been interacting the whole time.

That pissed me off, because I thought something like that could have been powerful as fuck. But instead, it was pointless. The girl did nothing, the second house thing was completely pointless, half the movie meant nothing.

Finishing the movie, I felt mad at them for not making something better. It had potential to be more than it was, but they turned out something ordinary instead. That bothers me more than a movie that is just straight up bad, I hate wasted potential.
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he still escapes without her but they don’t find the other house with the bodies without her dreams. That property would’ve been ignored if he had just escaped on his own. Those bodies being found was a big deal within the movie and a motivation for the other kids helping him through the black phone ..though perhaps the importance of this didn’t translate to audiences

I really liked the movie. Some of it was corny but I was into it the entire time. Ethan Hawke was creepy as hell as The Grabber.
 
Kingz said:
he still escapes without her but they don’t find the other house with the bodies without her dreams. That property would’ve been ignored if he had just escaped on his own. Those bodies being found was a big deal within the movie and a motivation for the other kids helping him through the black phone ..though perhaps the importance of this didn’t translate to audiences

I really liked the movie. Some of it was corny but I was into it the entire time. Ethan Hawke was creepy as hell as The Grabber.
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Good post.

And yes, the importance of that didn't translate well for me...I hadn't even considered that until you mentioned it.
That makes me lean even harder into the "pick an idea and run with it" point I raised earlier, because I feel what we got was a movie that loosely focused on a couple of different viewpoints/themes/stories and doing an ok job of it, rather than sticking to one and nailing it. It's a jack of all trades, master of none type of thing.

I like that you pointed that detail out, because it's something that could have worked really well if that was a more significant part of the movie. I know that yes, that's probably why the boys were helping out, but the audience being shown it's not the same house, and then that house being found (so plot point introduced to plot point resolved) is barely a minute apart.....no time at all for it to mean anything.

I guess my whole thing here is that I liked each of the individual elements, but felt the film didn't do enough with them by trying to do it all at the same time. I would have been happy if it was a psychic girl/ghost story. Or a kidnapped kid story. Or a complex bad guy reliving his trauma and trying to break the cycle of abuse. Any of those could have been really strong and powerful. But trying to do all of them at once and then not being able to go further than surface deep was a big disappointment for me.

Still enjoyed it overall, still a good movie, and still much better than the bulk of what we get for horror these days.
 
It's not a great horror, but it was very good. Definitely worth watching.
 
Smokes said:
I loved it. 8.5/10.

it was creepy as hell and this shot was evil.

ffb976ee1c63f3b90d1c235824c1c174b55df453.jpg
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Okay I gotta ask how and when the hell did this happen? RIP Smokes
 
deadshot138 said:
I made a thread and it got deleted without a notification. Mods on some fuck shit.
Click to expand...
Damn, that’s some bullshit for real. Weird af too. Smokes was a well known poster here- mods blocking explanations is kinda strange
 
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