| Universal Pictures | Release Date: June 24, 2022 | CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION | ||
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Positive:
23
Mixed:
12
Negative:
3
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Critic Reviews
RogerEbert.comJun 23, 2022
Jun 24, 2022
Jun 23, 2022
It's the period details that really make The Black Phone ring. It's not the set dressing, or the costumes, or the hairstyles (although Jeremy Davies does sport a fantastic muttonchops-mullet merger as Gwen and Finney's alcoholic, abusive father). It's that grimy sense of the era, that way that kids felt left to their own devices. This is an Amblin adventure drenched in R-rated fear.
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Jun 22, 2022
Based on a short story from Joe Hill and directed with tone-perfect style by Scott Derrickson, who wrote the screen adaptation with his “Doctor Strange” writing partner C. Robert Cargill, The Black Phone is a hauntingly effective, perfectly paced, consistently chilling and wickedly warped horror gem.
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The IndependentJun 23, 2022
As with Derrickson’s previous collaboration with Hawke, 2012’s Sinister, the director proves he can deliver an effective jumpscare – slick, and not too telegraphed. But there’s a thematic weight here that elevates The Black Phone above any of his previous work in the genre, a dark reminder of how often moral panics and bogeymen are conjured up in order to turn a society’s eyes away from the real and inescapable violence happening in people’s own homes.
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Jun 23, 2022
In place of gouting gore and surging fright, this enjoyable adaptation of Joe Hill’s 2005 short story has an almost contemplative tone, one that drains its familiar horror tropes — a masked psychopath, communications from beyond the grave — of much of their chill. The movie’s low goose bump count, though, is far from ruinous.
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