The Black Phone Is a Hit on Rotten Tomatoes

The Black Phone, Ethan Hawke's new horror movie coming to theaters this weekend, is scoring big with both fans and critics on Rotten Tomatoes in its early screenings, with 86% positive reviews on Rotten Tomatoes and an audience score of 89% as of this writing. The film has about 70 reviews so far -- enough to earn it a certified fresh stamp, and enough that it's not likely there will be a huge shift going forward. 

"I was purposely trying not to reinterpret it through through Spielberg's representation of suburban life," director Scott Derrickson recently said. "I think Stranger Things does a beautiful job of that. And I think that's really great. And I really love Stranger Things. I think a lot of movies it included are sort of drawing on that Spielberg influence. I wanted to do something very different, which was I didn't want to look back on these years of my life, personally, with nostalgia. I didn't want to look back at them through the filter of other cinema. I really tried to go back and look at the violence and the sort of danger and of what it was like for me growing up in North Denver in 1978 in a relatively violent  neighborhood where people fought and bled all the time."

The film is described, "Finney Shaw, a shy but clever 13-year-old boy, is abducted by a sadistic killer and trapped in a soundproof basement where screaming is of little use. When a disconnected phone on the wall begins to ring, Finney discovers that he can hear the voices of the killer's previous victims. And they are dead set on making sure that what happened to them doesn't happen to Finney." 

Starring four-time Oscar nominee Ethan Hawke in the most terrifying role of his career and introducing Mason Thames in his first-ever film role, The Black Phone is produced, directed, and co-written by Scott Derrickson, the writer-director of Sinister, The Exorcism of Emily Rose, and Marvel's Doctor Strange.

The film's screenplay is by Derrickson & C. Robert Cargill (Doctor Strange, Sinister franchise), based on the award-winning short story by Joe Hill from his New York Times bestseller 20th Century Ghosts. The film is produced by Derrickson & Cargill's Crooked Highway and presented by Universal and Blumhouse. Jason Blum, Scott Derrickson, and C. Robert Cargill are producers on the film, which is executive produced by Ryan Turek and Christopher H. Warner.

The Black Phone lands in theaters on June 24th.