The Black Phone Must Overcome The Source Story’s Biggest Problem

screenrant.com:

The Joe Hill adaptation of The Black Phone needs to overcome some major issues with the source story for the horror movie to succeed. It is never easy to bring a short story to life as a feature film. Even successful adaptations, like Netflix's dark vampire romance First Kill, often have to extensively expand the plot of the story to create enough plot for a full-length movie or TV show.

However, director Scott Derrickson's dark horror movie The Black Phone will have a more challenging time adapting its source story than most. Based on the story of the same name featured in Hill's debut collection, 2005's20th Century Ghosts, The Black Phone is a horror with a disarmingly simple narrative. However, it is this very simplicity (as well as the source story's unremitting bleakness) that could causeThe Black Phone to suffer from some major tonal issues.

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While Hill's horror story is undeniably effective, as is the case with many of the stories featured in20th Century Ghosts, «The Black Phone» is also a thin tale. Even though Derrickson and Hawke's involvement makes The Black Phone one of 2022's most anticipated horror movies, there is simply not enough plot in the original story to sustain an entire feature film. Not only that, but the existing plot is incredibly bleak, following a child who is trapped in a serial killer's basement for the entirety of the story until the closing scene. As a result, The Black Phone needs to expand on this premise while maintaining the intensity of the story's horror, but the movie adaptation must also simultaneously ensure that it doesn't become oppressively bleak and hopeless—a combination that would be a tall order for any adaptation.

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