The Black Phone-- My thoughts about the book with Spoilers!

 

When the movie Black Phone was announced, it raised curiosity about the book it was based on.

It isn’t often that a movie is based on a short story so of course I looked into it, knowing it was written by Joe Hill, Stephen King's son.

Of course when one is the child of an established person, expectations are high and Joe Hill doesn't disappoint. In fact, you can find shades of Stephen King's writing in it.

Stephen King is known as the master of horror who can paint vivid, terrifying pictures in the minds of readers. His advice in On Writing states that a writer must let the reader form their own pictures and that the purpose of the writer should be to just lead them to it.

Joe Hill's writing is more descriptive and he makes it easy on the reader to imagine the scene before him.

While Stephen King tends to go into greater detail in his stories, Joe Hill seems to be a firm believer in brevity.

Okay, so this isn't supposed to be a comparison piece, but then again comparisons are inevitable when writing about Stephen King and another writer in the same article.

Getting back to the story, The Black Phone has a pretty interesting opening. It sucks you in and you actually picture a boy sitting and watching a man put away groceries in his car; or rather, struggling to put then away.

Finney, the boy who is drinking his grape soda  watches the fat man with amusement as he opens his car only for some Black balloons to float away. The groceries slip from under the man's arm and as he picks up to gather them, smashes an egg in his hand.

Finney finds all this comical, yet he's a well-mannered boy and gets up to offer help.

The fat man is hesitant at first, embarrassed that his clumsiness was a spectacle but then he engages with the boy.

Finney imagines the man to be a clown considering he had black balloons but then also wonders if they were decoration for a funeral.

The man removes a spray can and Finney thinks it is silly string. It is not. Finney is sprayed with it and some of it enters his eyes and mouth. The next instant, he is picked up and pushed into the van.

To his horror, Finney realizes he's about to become the next victim of the Galesburg Grabber. When he awakens, he's in a dirty basement with a toilet, a mattress and an old-fashioned black phone on the wall. Finney cannot believe it at first. Surely, there couldn't be a working black phone in the prison he's being held, could it?

The Grabber seems nervous about it when he thinks he hears it ring but then is relieved when he recognizes it as the phone in his kitchen.

Finney slowly gets his vision back but feels threatened when the Grabber tells him that he won't make Finney do what he doesn't want to.

It is up to the reader to determine what is meant by the statement. Nothing good, of course.

Finney slowly realizes that the Grabber is also nervous about something else. There is someone else upstairs that doesn't share the Grabber's horrible secret. 

Finney calls for help but the Grabber tells him the room is sound-proofed. Finney's heart sinks and as time passes, he drinks water from the toilet's tank and imagines his elder sister, who was also born on the same day but years apart must be looking for him. He thinks he has a special connection with his sister because they share the same birthday.

He knows that Susannah has found the black balloons and knows what happened to him. He dreams about his parent's reactions.

He wakes up to the sound of the phone ringing. At first he can't believe it because he's tried the phone before and there was no dial tone. But as he picks it up, he hears a voice at the other end. It's a boy Finney used to know, Bruce, who he sort of looked up to.

The Boy claims he isn't sure about his name but that Finney has a chance to escape considering he was able to hear the phone ring. Finney is told that he must escape with what he is holding in his hand but that he must make it heavier with sand.

Sure enough, Finney finds a corner where there is sand exposed under the cement.

While the Grabber is away, the other man from upstairs comes down. He's the Grabber's brother and is shocked to see Finney. Before he can react, the Grabber comes and puts an axe on his brother's head.

Finney is shocked but recovers well enough to use the heavy phone to beat up his kidnapper.

It is then that the phone begins to ring. Finney holds it up to the Grabber and says, "It's for you."

That's the ending. An abrupt ending at that.

Now just who could it be? The Grabber is obviously haunted by something. He knows the black phone rings and every time it does, he knows it's one of the dead kids.

Every time a kid is kidnapped and kept in the basement the black phone rings but is never answered. Sometimes it is because the kid is killed immediately, one of the reasons the boy (Bruce) tells Finney. The reason Finney hears the ringing is because he managed to survive that long because the Grabber's brother was upstairs and the Grabber didn't want his secret revealed.

But every time the phone rang to save the kids, the Grabber must have heard it. He must know his past is coming for him. Maybe he even picked it up one day and heard one of the dead kids.

The story keeps you at the edge of your seat but unfortunately the abrupt ending isn't satisfactory. The story goes into great detail to describe the curve of the mattress but doesn't clarify just what the Grabber is afraid of.

Reading the story is akin to getting the answers to an exam only to not receive the one for a question that carries the most marks.

The movie based on this story is slated for release on June 24th, 2022. 

Scare Scale: 

Get the book on Amazon 

Read my review of THE BLACK PHONE  (With Ending Spoilers)