Now that I am done watching all of the Hellraiser movies, I’ve got a few days until the next theme starts up again so I’ll be watching a few horror movies I either missed, like this one, or some that just seemed interesting. With the sequel to this out in theaters this weekend, I figured now would be a good chance to see if this was good enough to warrant getting the franchise treatment or not. I heard plenty of mixed reviews when it came out with some people really liking it and other people saying it was kind of bland, so not entirely sure what to expect going in.

Taking place in the Denver area of Colorado in 1978, there is a serial child abductor that the media has dubbed “The Grabber” because whoever was in charge of naming things was feeling particularly lazy that day. Our main characters are Finney and Gwen Blake, a brother and sister from a single parent home with a shitty, drunk, abusive dad. Turns out that Gwen has psychic dreams that give her clues that might help find the Grabber. Which is good, since Finney ends up becoming his latest victim and getting taken to his murder basement with the titular black phone. Finney is also psychic but his power is the ability to talk to ghosts as long there is a non-functional phone nearby. Now, with their powers combined, they will be able to defeat Ethan Hawke in a kabuki mask.

The movie is originally based on a 30 page short story from Joe Hill and you can really tell when watching it. The parts of the movie that are Finney in the basement getting calls from the dead kids is great. All of them telling him what they did and how it failed and how to do it better and seeing how all of the various failed escape attempts will combine into something at the end? That’s a great short horror movie about ghosts. Unfortunately, in order to pad the runtime to make it a feature length film, we get this entire storyline about Gwen’s dreams and how their mom was also psychic but it drove her crazy and so she committed suicide and that’s why the dad is so fucked up and hates the idea of Gwen being psychic but it ultimately doesn’t remotely matter. If Gwen as a character was entirely removed from the movie, it would play out exactly the same. Ditto for the detective characters that ineffectually bumble around trying to solve the case where the biggest lead they have is a child’s psychic dreams. Just a lot of cruft that accomplishes nothing but add runtime.

To his credit, Ethan Hawke gives a great performance as The Grabber. He’s understated and menacing in a way that feels creepy. We get just enough information about what it is that he does to the kids to maybe guess as to what it was exactly that might have happened to him in his past that pushed him to be like this without the movie spelling it out. The mask that he wears is probably what deserves the most credit for the movie getting as much mileage as it has, though, since the look is iconic enough to stick in people’s memories. The rest of the movie feels so generic when we aren’t in that basement and dealing with The Grabber that I can’t imagine any other reason for this sticking around in anyone’s mind much past the credits.

I can see why the mixed reviews now. While for sure not a bad movie, this was a short story that should have been a short film.

Score: 3 out of 5