The Black Phone’s Real Horror Is In Its Everyday Cruelty

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The Blumhouse horror film The Black Phone has a lot of impressive elements. It has a strong cast, a stand-out villain, and a story that is hard to look away from. It's also based on the well-crafted short story from the talented Joe Hill. While the premise is absolutely scary, as The Grabber is taking kids, keeping them in a basement, and murdering them, there is a lot more going on here.

The child characters in the story are suffering every single day, as they have to face abuse and pain that no one should, regardless of their age. This overall setting contributes to a feeling of dread that persists throughout the movie's entire run time. The Black Phone is gritty, real, and honest about how some kids tragically lack the love and family support that they deserve.

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While The Black Phone's villain The Grabber is a letdown in some ways, the movie is still absolutely horrifying and that's thanks to the struggles that the child characters face every day. The child actors in The Black Phones are impressive, as Madeleine McGraw and Mason Thames play a sister and brother named Gwen and Finney who live in Denver in the late '70s. Their world is a brutal and sad one as their father Terrence Blake (Jeremy Davies) is an alcoholic who abuses them and then leaves them alone the rest of the time. The kids are burdended by him, equally scared of him and wanting to be accepted by him.

Director and co-writer Scott Derrickson shared with The Hollywood Reporter that he thought carefully about the disturbing scene when Terrence hits Gwen with an object for telling the police that she had psychic dreams related to The Grabber. Derrickson said, “I thought, ‘I don’t want to see this kid actually