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[This story contains spoilers for The Black Phone.]
It’s been 10 years since Sinister’s creative team delivered one of Blumhouse’s earliest low-budget success stories, but the trio of C. Robert Cargill, Scott Derrickson and Ethan Hawke have answered the call yet again with The Black Phone.
Blumhouse and Universal’s latest supernatural horror film opened to a stellar 23 million this past weekend, and writer-producer Cargill is especially grateful considering a 2022 release wasn’t originally in the cards. Cargill first met Derrickson at a time when he was a still film critic, and during a life-altering get-together in Las Vegas, Cargill pitched Sinister to the filmmaker, initiating their now long-running creative partnership. Sinister would go on to make nearly 30 times its 3 million production budget, and the duo was then recruited by Marvel Studios to helm 2016’s Doctor Strange.
Despite a box office haul of nearly 700 million and critical acclaim,...
[This story contains spoilers for The Black Phone.]
It’s been 10 years since Sinister’s creative team delivered one of Blumhouse’s earliest low-budget success stories, but the trio of C. Robert Cargill, Scott Derrickson and Ethan Hawke have answered the call yet again with The Black Phone.
Blumhouse and Universal’s latest supernatural horror film opened to a stellar 23 million this past weekend, and writer-producer Cargill is especially grateful considering a 2022 release wasn’t originally in the cards. Cargill first met Derrickson at a time when he was a still film critic, and during a life-altering get-together in Las Vegas, Cargill pitched Sinister to the filmmaker, initiating their now long-running creative partnership. Sinister would go on to make nearly 30 times its 3 million production budget, and the duo was then recruited by Marvel Studios to helm 2016’s Doctor Strange.
Despite a box office haul of nearly 700 million and critical acclaim,...
- 6/27/2022
- by Brian Davids
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
This review of “The Black Phone” was first published June 19, 2022, after its premiere at the Tribeca Film Festival.
The creepiest (and best) moments in the kiddie-kidnap horror pic “The Black Phone” take full advantage of the movie’s basic setup: a suburban teen gets abducted and then struggles to escape his captor’s sound-proof basement.
That scenario, co-adapted from a Joe Hill (“NOS4A2”) short story by director Scott Derrickson (“Doctor Strange”) and co-writer C. Robert Cargill, folds neatly into the mini-trend of quasi-nostalgic horror-adventures that both “Stranger Things” and the 2017 “It” adaptation brought back into vogue.
Derrickson and Cargill successfully tailor their focused and mostly compelling narrative to a Steven Spielberg/Amblin Entertainment–esque bit of Stephen King–sploitation. There’s nothing in “The Black Phone” that you can’t also get in more inventive recent King adaptations (like “Doctor Sleep”) or King-like homages.
Also Read:
Ethan Hawke Is a...
The creepiest (and best) moments in the kiddie-kidnap horror pic “The Black Phone” take full advantage of the movie’s basic setup: a suburban teen gets abducted and then struggles to escape his captor’s sound-proof basement.
That scenario, co-adapted from a Joe Hill (“NOS4A2”) short story by director Scott Derrickson (“Doctor Strange”) and co-writer C. Robert Cargill, folds neatly into the mini-trend of quasi-nostalgic horror-adventures that both “Stranger Things” and the 2017 “It” adaptation brought back into vogue.
Derrickson and Cargill successfully tailor their focused and mostly compelling narrative to a Steven Spielberg/Amblin Entertainment–esque bit of Stephen King–sploitation. There’s nothing in “The Black Phone” that you can’t also get in more inventive recent King adaptations (like “Doctor Sleep”) or King-like homages.
Also Read:
Ethan Hawke Is a...
- 6/23/2022
- by Simon Abrams
- The Wrap
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