Ethan Hawke's "spine-tingling" new horror movie The Black Phone earns perfect Rotten Tomatoes score

gamesradar.com:

Ethan Hawke is no stranger to horror, having fronted movies such as The Purge and Sinister. Now the actor's latest, The Black Phone, is being hailed as his best genre flick yet.

Written by Doctor Strange duo C. Robert Gargill and Scott Derrickson, and directed by Derrickson, The Black Phone is based on Stephen King's son Joe Hill's short story of the same name. It centers on Finney Shaw, a 13-year-old boy who gets abducted by a sadistic killer and locked inside a soundproof basement. 

At first, the youngster's chances of escaping seem cripplingly slim. But when the disconnected phone on the wall starts ringing, and he learns that The Grabber's murdered victims are on the line trying to help him, he realizes all hope is not lost.

Also starring Mason Thames, Madeleine McGraw, E. Roger Mitchell, Jeremy Davies, and IT: Chapter Two's James Ransone, the film is being described by critics as "a terrifying tale" full of "perfectly executed jump scares", and its glowing first reviews have earned it a 100 per cent fresh score on Rotten Tomatoes. 

Much of the praise references Hawke's work in the movie, with IGN Movies' Amelia Amberwing (opens in new tab) claiming that the star "gives a wholly transformative, bloodcurdling, and captivating performance in The Black Phone that is truly unlike anything we've ever seen from him before."

"The supernatural horror movie The Black Phone leans more into mounting tension and haunting melancholy rather than outright scares," says CBR's Sam Stone (opens in new tab), as Variety's Owen Gleiberman (opens in new tab) writes: "The Black Phone carries you along on its own terms — that is, if you accept that it’s less an ingenious freak-out of a thriller than a kind of stylized contraption."

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