Metacritic reviews

The Black Phone is a succinct and stressful terror blanketed with themes of friendship, family, and inventive portrayals of resiliency.

The Black Phone mixes the supernatural with relatable horrors in ways that will leave you both terrified and hopeful.

For my money, The Black Phone is more complete and effective than Derrickson's previous horror movie "Sinister" and is the first feature adaptation of Joe Hill's work that demands more big-screen Joe Hill adaptations.

The story’s final third works even better than the buildup would suggest, shrugging off some of the atmospherics and, with a clever nod to a classic in the serial-killer genre, focusing all the movie’s energies on a sequence that delivers

Despite its darker-than-dark premise — Abduction! Dead kids! Imprisonment! — The Black Phone finds hope in the midst of the horror. Looking for soulful scares this summer? Answer the call.

Derrickson can build a mood and craft creepy imagery, and he moves his camera with precision. But this feels like a notebook of compelling visual and narrative ideas that never quite fit together, that can’t quite manage to coalesce into coherence.

It’s a horror ride that holds you, and it should have no trouble carving out an audience, but I didn’t find it particularly scary.

Derrickson and Cargill successfully tailor their focused and mostly compelling narrative to a Steven Spielberg/Amblin Entertainment–esque bit of Stephen King–sploitation.

Perhaps The Black Phone should have pushed its premise a bit more, building real stakes and real thrills in a deeper analysis of its archetypes. If performances by Thames, McGraw, and Hawke are strong, there could stand to be a few more twists and a bit more character development to transcend what is a middle-of-the-road psychological thriller.

Answer the call of The Black Phone if you dare. Just be aware that, much like the severed cord dangling underneath the device, there’s a crucial disconnect between the provocative ideas that it sets up, and what it ultimately delivers.