A new Blumhouse horror has a perfect 100 percent score on Rotten Tomatoes ahead of its release next month, with critics saying it manages to exceed 'extremely high expectations'. Watch the trailer here:
Directed by Scott Derrickson and produced by modern horror lynchpin Jason Blum, The Black Phone is based on a 2004 short story of the same name by Joe Hill.
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It follows an abducted child (Mason Thames), who is able to communicate with the past victims of his kidnapper (Ethan Hawke) through a disconnected phone.
A synopsis says: “Director Scott Derrickson returns to his terror roots and partners again with the foremost brand in the genre, Blumhouse, with a new horror thriller.
“Finney Shaw, a shy but clever 13-year-old boy, is abducted by a sadistic killer and trapped in a soundproof basement where screaming is of little use. When a disconnected phone on the wall begins to ring, Finney discovers that he can hear the voices of the killer’s previous victims. And they are dead set on making sure that what happened to them doesn’t happen to Finney.
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“Starring four-time Oscar® nominee Ethan Hawke in the most terrifying role of his career and introducing Mason Thames in his first-ever film role, The Black Phone is produced, directed, and co-written by Scott Derrickson, the writer-director of Sinister, The Exorcism of Emily Rose and Marvel’s Doctor Strange.”
Derrickson, Jason Blum and C. Robert Cargill all serve as producers on the film, which is presented by Universal and Blumhouse.
After having its world premiere at Fantastic Fest in September last year, the movie received a slew of glowing reviews - and now has a perfect 100 percent score on Rotten Tomatoes.
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IndieWire's Marisa Mirabal said the The Black Phone is a 'sleek, stressful, and violent zeitgeist of a horror film', adding that it 'captures the audience’s emotions as quickly as the film’s antagonist kidnaps children in broad daylight'.
Eric Vespe from Slash Film said the villain is a 'mask-wearing psycho' played with 'great relish and dedication' by Hawke, also praising young newcomer Thames, who 'absolutely knocks it out of the park here, carrying the movie with confidence and a sense of reality that you need in order to make the supernatural stuff hit home'.
"Derrickson and his crew took a neat little horror concept from an actually short short story and were able to expand upon it in ways that both make sense and don't feel like filler," Vespe added.
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Amelia Emberwing of IGN, meanwhile, said the film felt like the 'sibling' of Derrickson and Cargill's 2012 flick Sinister – also starring Hawke – but concluded it had somehow managed to 'exceed extremely high expectations in nearly every aspect'.
Emberwing wrote: "The writing/directing team puts personal traumas on full display while expertly showcasing the complications of childhood in the '70s and the very real monsters of our world, while the performances of the child actors Mason Thames and Madeleine McGraw take the already tight story to new heights."
The Black Phone hits cinemas in the UK and US on 24 June.
Topics: TV and Film
Jess Hardiman