THE BLACK PHONE : Tuesday 2nd August 2022.

I saw the MA15+ Rated 'THE BLACK PHONE' earlier this week, and this American super-natural horror film is Co-Written for the screen, Co-Produced and Directed by Scott Derrickson whose previous feature film outings take in the likes of 'Hellraiser : Inferno' in 2000, 'The Exorcism of Emily Rose' in 2005, 'The Day the Earth Stood Still' in 2008, 'Sinister' in 2012, 'Deliver Us from Evil' in 2014 and 'Doctor Strange' most recently in 2016. This film is an adaptation of the 2004 short story of the same name by Joe Hill. The film saw its Premier screening at Fantastic Fest in late September last year and went on release in the US towards the end of June this year, here in Australia on 21st July and has so far grossed US$144M off the back of a US$18M production budget and garnering generally positive Reviews.

The film opens up with a bunch of young lads playing in a baseball competition, with thirteen year old Finney Blake (Mason Thames) pitching the ball, and Bruce (Tristan Pravong) batting. With two strikes behind him, Finney pitches his third ball which results in Bruce hitting a home run and winning the match. After the game Bruce and Finney congratulate each other with Bruce saying that Finney has got a 'minted arm'. It is 1978 and we are in Denver, Colorado. Finney lives with his sister Gwen (Madeleine McGraw), and their abusive and alcoholic father Terrence (Jeremy Davies) in the suburbs. At school Finney is often bullied by the same gang, but is looked out for by his good friend Robin (Miguel Cazarez Mora). One day Bruce is seen cycling towards a black panel van, and is next seen on a Missing Person's poster adorning the local streets. 

Gwen, who experiences psychic dreams just as her late mother did, dreams of Bruce's abduction and sees that he was taken by a man in a black van with black balloons, known locally as The Grabber. Detectives Wright and Miller (E. Roger Mitchell and Troy Rudeseal respectively) attempt to interview young Gwen, but struggle to believe her claims. Sometime later the Grabber abducts Robin, and then within a few days Finney is also kidnapped. 

Finney comes around sometime later on a mattress in an empty soundproofed basement. On the wall is a disconnected black rotary phone that the Grabber claims does not work, and the broken cord would seem to confirm that notion. Later, Finney hears the phone ring and answers it. Bruce's spirit, unable to remember his own name or who he was when he was alive, tells Finney about a floor tile located in the corridor to the toilet, that he can remove to dig a tunnel to escape through the soft earth directly beneath the floor. 

The Police conduct door to door searches for Finney, but this proves fruitless. The Grabber (Ethan Hawke) brings Finney food and a soda. While eating on scrambled eggs the phone rings and it is another boy called Billy, who instructs him that he had hidden a length of cord behind the junction of the wall and floor and he can use it to escape through the high window of the basement. While climbing Finney breaks the bars on the window which come crashing down on top of him and so preventing him from climbing back up. Gwen dreams of Billy being abducted and confides in her father about what is happening. Finney sleeps and when he wakes up the Grabber is there in the basement having watched him sleep. The Grabber exits but leaves the door to the basement unlocked. As Finney prepares to sneak out the phone rings again and Billy tells him not to as this is a game the Grabber likes to play, as he lies in wait upstairs to attack his victims within an inch of their lives, with a belt, just as Billy was. 

Detectives Wright and Miller speak to an eccentric man called Max (James Ransone) who is staying in the area with his brother and who has been conducting his own investigation into the missing kids. It is revealed Finney is being held in the basement of Max's brothers house, of which he is unaware, and that the Grabber is in fact his brother. After a heated exchange with the Grabber, where he tests Finney's honesty, he speaks as if he would have let Finney go free. Finney speaks to another one of his victims, Griffin, on the phone. Griffin directs Finney to the combination of a bike lock scrawled on the basement wall with a bottle top, and that the bike lock secures the front door to the house. He also informs him that the Grabber has fallen asleep upstairs while waiting for him to emerge, and that if he is to get past him he must do so in absolute silence. Finney gingerly sneaks upstairs and unlocks the door after several attempts with the dial combination, but the Grabber's dog alerts him to Finney's escape. Finney flees down the street but is quickly recaptured at knife point. 

Discouraged by his failed escape attempt, Finney answers the phone to hear another victim, a punk called Vance whom Finney was scared of. Vance advises Finney of a storage room located immediately behind one of the basement walls and that he can escape through it if he breaks a hole in the wall and exits through the freezer on the other side. Finney creates a hole with the cistern lid and enters the back of the freezer only to discover that the freezer door is locked. Feeling even more dejected Finney breaks down sobbing, totally disheartened. The phone rings one more time with Robin at the end of the line. He consoles Finney and encourages him to finally stand up and fight for himself. He instructs Finney to remove the phone receiver and pack it tight with the dirt he had dug up and to use it as a weapon.

Gwen has a dream of Vance's abduction and learns the number of the Grabber's property. She cycles around the neighbourhood trying to locate the house and falls from her bike when confronted by the bloodied spirits of the Grabbers victims stood in front of her adjacent to the house. She returns home and calls Detective Wright. 

Max realises Finney is being held in the house and rushes to the basement to free him, believing that his brother is out working. Little does he know that his brother is standing right behind him on the stairs and brings down an axe right on his head killing him instantly. The police rush over to the house that Gwen found but find it empty. In the basement, however, they find the buried bodies of the Grabber's five previous victims with an open grave waiting for the sixth. 

The Grabber attacks Finney with the axe, but Finney manages to trip the Grabber with the cord, causing him to fall into the partial tunnel Finney dug, where the Grabber breaks and traps his ankle in the window bars placed at the bottom. Finney repeatedly smashes the weighted phone handset against the face and head of the Grabber. The spirits of the Grabbers other victims taunt him over the phone before Finney breaks his neck with the cord used to trip him initially, killing him. Finney distracts the guard dog with meat from the freezer and escapes the house using the combination he learned from Griffin. Finney exits the house across the street from the gravesites where he reunites with Gwen and the police rush to the property. The siblings comfort each other as their father arrives, apologises for his treatment of Finney and begs his forgiveness. Back at school, the new local hero and a now more confident Finney sits next to his crush in Science class.

With 'The Black Phone' Scott Derrickson is back in his comfort zone providing the audience with a well crafted story, combined with dramatic, emotional, super-natural and horror elements and set back in the late '70's where the aesthetic of that era is spot on and hark back to the classic horror films of the '80's such as 'The Shining', 'Poltergeist', 'Misery' and 'A Nightmare on Elm Street' and the type of story that could have easily been penned by Stephen King. The performances from Thames and McGraw as the two siblings who each have their own super-natural experiences to work through are first rate, and Hawke as the multiple child killer whose face is never fully revealed, lends his menacing machismo to solid effect. As a horror film, this film is light on jump scares and what would be described as real moments of horror tension and terror, but as a super-natural crime thriller it does deliver on the chills and spills that help elevate it above many of its current contemporaries. 

'The Black Phone' merits four claps of the Odeon Online clapperboard from a possible five claps.

-Steve, at Odeon Online-

IT : CHAPTER TWO - Tuesday 10th September 2019.

'IT : CHAPTER TWO' is Rated MA15+  and here it is - the sequel to the hugely popular and successful 'IT' supernatural horror film of 2017 based on the 1986 Stephen King novel of the same name, which I saw earlier this week. That first instalment raked in US$701M at the global Box Office off the back of a production budget of US$35M making it the highest-grossing R-Rated horror film of all-time, the highest-grossing horror film internationally and the highest-grossing horror film of all time. The film also received positive reviews, with many Critics calling it one of the best Stephen King adaptations, and along the way it picked up eight award wins and a further 43 nominations from around the awards and festival circuit. This film saw its Premier screening in Los Angeles at the end of August, and went on general release in the US and here in Australia last week. Off the back of a Production Budget of circa US$70M, the film has so far grossed US$221M and has generated for the most part positive Press. Both instalments have been Directed by Argentinian Andy Muschietti.

It is 2016 and we open up at the Derry Carnival at night, with fair ground rides, side stalls and attractions aplenty to occupy anyone and everyone. At the carnival we are introduced to Adrian Mellon (Xavier Dolan) and his boyfriend Don Hagarty (Taylor Frey) who are attacked by a group of homophobic youths on their way home. Beating the pair up on the street out of view from the general public, the youths man handle a semi-conscious Mellon over a bridge and into the fast flowing river below. Hagarty, distraught, gives chase to his struggling boyfriend only to see him rescued from the river by Pennywise, who in turn kills him. Hagarty looks on helpless and horrified from the opposite riverbank. And so, twenty-seven years after the Losers Club defeated Pennywise the Clown (Bill Skarsgard), IT returns to terrorise the town of Derry, Maine once again. Later that same night Mike Hanlon (Isaiah Mustafa) overhears the incident on a Police scanner of a dismembered body found down by the riverbank, and rushes to the scene.

Mike quickly realises that 'IT' has returned. He calls the other members of the Losers Club who have now all gone their separate and independent ways and have carved out successful careers for themselves away from Derry, all except Mike who has remained in Derry throughout all the passing years. He calls Bill Denbrough (James McAvoy) now a successful mystery thriller writer based in LA and married to a famous Actress; Richie Tozier (Bill Hader) now a successful stand-up comedian also based in LA; Ben Hanscom (Jay Ryan) now a successful architect living in Nebraska and having slimmed down and toned up from the fat kid that he was; Eddie Kaspbrak (James Ransone) who is now a successful risk assessor working for a major firm in New York City; Stanley Uris (Andy Bean) who is now a successful accountant working in Atlanta; and Beverly Marsh (Jessica Chastain) who has become a successful fashion designer working in Chicago. They all take Mike's call, although need prompting to remember who Mike is as most are forgetful about their childhoods and disturbed by the calls, but agree to return given that they all swore a blood oath to reunite in Derry if Pennywise ever resurfaced. Stan, however, commits suicide after his call by slashing his wrists while taking a bath at home. Without knowing of Stanley's recent death, the Losers reunite at a local Chinese restaurant in Derry and slowly begin to remember their past over a few beers and a meal together, but then become terrified by a relentless onslaught of disturbing visions and horrific taunts implanted in their sub-conscious but seemingly very real, created by IT.

Once outside the restaurant after the horrifying visions have subsided, Beverly tries to connect with Stanley only to reach his distraught wife who informs her that he committed suicide. Richie and Eddie have already seen and heard enough, and decide to leave while Mike reveals to Bill that he met with a Native American tribe who showed him a vision of IT arriving to Earth from the stars decades ago, and informed him of the 'Ritual of Chud', the means to destroy IT forever. Bill and Mike are able to convince Richie and Eddie to stay and finish what was started. Henry Bowers (Teach Grant), having survived his apparent death, had been confined to a mental hospital for killing his father and two friends back in 1989, and with the help of IT, he escapes, intent of seeing off the Losers Club finally, one by one.

For the Ritual of Chud to be successful, each Loser must find an artifact of some personal significance from their past. Beverly goes to her old home and finds the love letter Ben wrote for her, though she still believes Bill wrote it. A Mrs. Kersh (Joan Gregson) now lives there - a seemingly sweet and gentle old lady who invites Beverly in for a nice cup of tea, but minutes later it turns out that Mrs. Kersh is anything but, as an insidious monster manifests itself and rampages through the house attacking Beverly who hallucinates other visions of Pennywise before finally escaping.

Bill meanwhile comes across a second hand shop where in the window is his old bike from when he was a kid. He goes into the store and is greeted by the shop keeper played in cameo by Stephen King who sells Bill back his bike for US$300 - steep, but as a successful author he knows that he can afford it. Bill then cycles back to his former house and goes to the storm drain where his younger brother Georgie (Jackson Robert Scott) was killed in October 1988 and recovers his paper boat before meeting a boy named Dean (Luke Roessler), who tells Bill that he lives in Bill's old house and often hears voices coming up through the drain in the bath. 

Ben goes to the town's high school and finds his old yearbook page, which Beverly was the only person to sign. Eddie goes to a pharmacy and recovers an inhaler. Richie goes to an abandoned arcade where he finds a game token, but afterwards is confronted in the town's park by Pennywise whose taunts him with threats to reveal his dirty little secret to the world. After all have managed to evade individual encounters with IT, the Losers use a shower cap retrieved from their secret forest childhood clubhouse for Stan, and Mike finds the rock that started their fight against the Bowers gang all those years ago.

Back at the guesthouse where all but Mike are staying, Bill and Beverly share a kiss before a skateboard caked in blood and with a message written on the underside comes rolling down the staircase. Bill recognises the board from his earlier encounter with young Dean, and realises that IT is going after Dean, and chases him to the carnival in an attempt to save the boy. He sees Dean disappear into the Clown Funhouse, and into a maze of mirrors and glass panels. There he comes across Dean but on the other side of a glass panel and therefore out of reach, as Pennywise appears on the other side of Dean, also separated by a glass panel. Pennywise repeatedly slams his head against the glass panel so cracking it and so giving him access to the boy, who then devours him. 

Traumatised by his failure to save both Georgie and Dean, he returns to the run down abandoned house at 29, Neibolt Street, to murder IT alone. Bowers attacks and wounds Eddie by stabbing him in the face with his knife, but survives and in turn pulls the knife from his severely bloodied cheek and stabs Bowers in the chest. Mike is at the library waiting for the other Losers to rendezvous with him there, and is attacked by Bowers but is killed by Richie arriving just in time. The rest of the Losers depart for the Neibolt house to aid Bill, as they had always vowed to stick together to thwart IT.

Once inside the house, it is seen to have fallen further into a state of disrepair and seemingly horrors awaiting at every turn and in every decrepit room. After confronting various horrors all conjured up by IT, the group descends into an extensive cavern buried deep beneath the house and through the sewers in order to complete the Ritual. 

In forming a circle, holding hands and repeating a chant directed by Mike, the group seem to have early success, until IT reveals that he is able to withstand the Ritual, unaffected. IT takes on a giant, spider-like form with Pennywise's head, and pressures Mike into revealing to the Losers that the Natives who attempted the Ritual in the past all died in the process. 

The Losers are then all individually thrown into nightmarish scenarios that they must endure, but from which they all manage to escape from before arriving back inside the cavern from whence they came. Richie is hypnotised and elevated by IT's hypnotic 'deadlight' eyes and is about to be killed, but Eddie comes to his rescue and is immediately impaled by IT's razor sharp spider legs in the process. 

The Losers regroup and come to the realisation that IT can be killed if they stand up to IT, face their fears, show IT that they are no longer afraid and make IT feel smaller than he actually is. They surround and berate IT repeatedly with a barrage of insults making IT shrink physically and weaken mentally until they are able to tear out IT's heart and crush it so extinguishing all life from IT. At this point, the cavern begins to implode and Eddie dies from his injuries despite Richie's attempts to save him. The remaining group now need to race against time to exit the rapidly crumbling cavern and get back to the surface before it all comes crashing down around them and on top of them. They do so just about, and exit through the front door of 29, Neibolt Street, before the house collapses in on itself in a heap of old timbers and dust. 

The remaining Losers return to the quarry where they once swam together and jump in from the cliff top high above the lake to wash off the dust, the dirt, debris and blood. Sometime later, the Losers all individually receive posthumous letters from Stanley, detailing that he thought he would've held them back, but knew they could defeat IT if they were brave enough without him. Mike is seen to be packing up his belongings into his car as he decides to move out of Derry to start a new life.

Also starring as their younger selves are Jaeden Martell (aka Jaeden Lieberher) as the younger Bill,  Sophia Lillis as the younger Beverly, Jeremy Ray Taylor as the younger Ben, Finn Wolfhard as younger Richie, Chosen Jacobs as younger Mike, Jack Dylan Grazer as younger Eddie and Wyatt Oleff as younger Stanley. All those portraying their younger selves reprise their roles from the first film.

I did enjoy 'IT : Chapter Two', but not quite as much as Chapter One and felt that it meandered somewhat and at a running time of two hours and 49 minutes could have done with  little more scrutiny in the editing suite I thought. That said, Bill Skarsgard as Pennywise remains as menacing and as devilishly dastardly as he did in the first instalment, and the now adult members of the Losers Club are well cast and seem to share a nervous chemistry that just heightens their on-screen presence, interspersed with flashbacks to their younger selves that serves to recapture the essence of the first film. Director Andy Muschietti doesn't hold back on the gore, the monster effects, and the horror scares that you can see coming from a mile away but still deliver the necessary jolt to maintain the interest throughout. Certainly worth the price of your movie ticket to see the conclusion to the story that comes full circle, albeit a little too long, melodramatic at times and just a tad predictable in places.

'IT : Chapter Two' merits three claps of the Odeon Online clapperboard from a possible five.

-Steve, at Odeon Online-