This article contains spoilers for The Black Phone (2022)Scott Derrickson has produced a horror film that only ramps up the intensity throughout its 103-minute runtime. The Black Phone (2022) tells the story of a young boy being taken by a serial murderer known only as the Grabber. When this child begins to have his supernatural abilities manifest, he starts to hear the voices of the Grabber’s past victims speaking to him through a disconnected phone. With a dark plot, terrific director Scott Derrickson, and terrifying actor Ethan Hawke playing the lead antagonist, this film had many intense moments at hand. Here we will be going through each of these moments and detailing how effectively each scene made audiences uncomfortable and anxious about the characters’ safety.
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6 Bully Beatdown
Universal Pictures
Roughly twenty minutes into the film, we get our first taste of the violence that will be displayed throughout. When a bully challenges Finney’s friend Robin, Robin refuses to back down and proceeds to take the bully down brutally. Robin would continue to punch the bully when they were already down, leaving his face a bloody mess in the aftermath. While standing up to bullies has been a featured story arc across multiple film genres, here we don’t see the camera cut away from the action. We don’t see Robin give a helping hand to the bully after taking him down. Instead, we are treated to a long shot of brutal violence taking place between two children, a scene that sets the tone for the rest of the film.
MOVIEWEB VIDEO OF THE DAY
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5 Child Abuse
Given the film’s overall plot, the audience knew children wouldn’t exclusively perpetrate the violence. Finney and his sister, Gwen, are in the care of Terrence, their alcoholic, abusive father. Their father had come to hate the psychic abilities of the children’s mother and would grow angry at any sign that Gwen had those same abilities. After the police questioned Gwen at school about her knowing details of the Grabber investigation that weren’t public, she admitted that she had dreamed about it.
The police would visit Terrence at work, making him angry at Gwen for openly speaking of her dreams. Finney would be alerted by the sounds of Gwen crying, and when he ran to her aid, he would see that his father had been whipping Gwen with a belt. Terrence would command Finney to stay out of it, and though Gwen would show defiance by breaking Terrence’s bottle of liquor, he would continue to beat her in an uncomfortable scene.
4 The Grabber Waits
After the Grabber has kidnapped Finney and trapped him inside a soundproof basement, a seeming game begins to play. The Grabber initially locks the door upon leaving every time, but after delivering breakfast, he seemingly forgets to lock the door upon leaving.
Finney gets up and moves towards the door when he hears the phone ring. Upon answering it, Billy, a victim of the Grabber, warns him not to go up the stairs. Billy would explain that this is a part of the game the Grabber plays, called “Naughty Boy,” where he dares the child to go upstairs without permission so that he has an excuse to beat them to death. The tension behind this scene is increased when Finney proceeds to walk up the stairs but decides against it, as the camera continues to pan around the corner where the Grabber is sitting shirtless with a belt at the ready.
3 Cracking the Combination
After trying to climb out the window doesn’t work, Finney gets another idea for how to escape from Griffin, another deceased victim. Griffin explains that the Grabber keeps the door out of the house locked at night and that he uses his bike lock to do so. When Finney asks him for the combination, he admits he doesn’t remember but wrote it down on the wall. Unfortunately, the combination is five digits, so Finney doesn’t know which of the five digits is a single number and which are double-digit numbers.
Griffin informs him that he needs to try that night as the Grabber has passed out in the chair, waiting for him to come upstairs. The tension mounts as Finney sneaks past the Grabber, but things only get more intense when he proceeds to try three different combinations to open the lock. Upon entering the third combination, he opens the door, alerting the dog and waking the Grabber. The chase and the threats the Grabber whispers into Finney’s ear to keep him quiet fill the audience with dread as we’ve seen Finney escape the house, only to be dragged back in.
2 A Cracked Case Equals a Cracked Skull
Throughout the film, many parties attempt to figure out where the Grabber is. The police have no leads, and Gwen only has her dreams to go off of. Another man, Max, is attempting to locate the Grabber. Max doesn’t realize that the Grabber is his brother who is staying with him. Despite his abhorrent drug abuse, Max is making progress on the case, constantly finding links to where the children were last seen and pointing out key details of the case to the police.
Max reaches an epiphany that his brother’s house is right in the zone where he suspects the killer to be located and proceeds to look into the basement. Max would find Finney in the basement, shocked that he had figured out the case. Believing his brother to be at work, Max doesn’t see the urgency at the moment and proceeds to ask if he can tell Finney how he has cracked the case. Unfortunately, the Grabber returns home and cracks Max’s skull with an axe. This moment may have been sudden, but the shock of another escape quickly being dashed is enough to make this one of the most intense scenes in the film, except for one other scene, that is.
1 The Grabber’s End
We segue into the climax of the film. After making preparations using all of the advice the previous victims had given him, Finney would fight the Grabber, tricking him into falling into a pit where Bruce had instructed Finney to continue digging. The Grabber’s leg would be injured in the fall, and following the lessons that Robin had taught him, Finney would proceed to punch the Grabber with a dirt-filled phone handle.
Though the Grabber would trip Finney up for a moment, Finney would step past the Grabber and, using the phone cord, begin to strangle him to death. Finney pauses as he begins to hear the phone ring and sees that the Grabber also recognizes the sound of the phone. Placing the phone to the Grabber’s ear, the spirits of his victims verbally lash out at the Grabber as Finney finishes him off. After seeing Finney come so close just to fail, this intense fight sequence would see the underdog finally prevail.
