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A review by mirrorchaser
The Black Phone by Joe Hill
3.0
I saw the movie starring Ethan Hawke based on this story and it was phenomenal. I couldn't sleep that night and thought about the movie for MONTHS. Months. That's crazy and I'm not sure it has ever happened to me before with a horror film, at least not since I was a child. When I found out that it was a book, I was elated and ran to the library to put a hold on a copy.
I ended up not having time to commit to the entire anthology but knew I could read the few short chapters that made up this particular story.
Well, I'm not going to lie about it, I was majorly disappointed. I really do think I would have liked this story if I hadn't seen the movie first but it's truly hard to believe that this is the source material. It's a short story and, if you've ever met me or have read any review I've ever left ever, you'll know that I just don't like short stories. I think that very few writers are talented enough and have the right stories to pen a good short story. They are always missing so much, the characters can't have any depth, and if it's anything other than the world you currently live it, there's no way to create a good and compelling setting.
This story got dinged on all of the above. Johnny's survival is a stroke of luck up until Bruce is on the phone and even that is lucky because Johnny happened to live long enough to hear it. There's nothing special about Johnny, which might be part of Hill's point, I guess. The villain isn't really creepy or scary. I felt like I was being told that he should be scary because he was a kidnapper. Finney's sister is mentioned but there's essentially no reason for that other than the fact that it might, possibly, MAYBE give Johnny a small bit of hope. At the end of the day, this short story was a skeleton of what it could have been... and what the movie was. The movie is a perfect response to this review because everything I disliked about the short story is blown away by the film.
This is one case where I wish the book didn't even exist and it was simply a great movie. I can't even believe I just wrote that, being a snobby book-purist. But, hey, anything can happen.
I ended up not having time to commit to the entire anthology but knew I could read the few short chapters that made up this particular story.
Well, I'm not going to lie about it, I was majorly disappointed. I really do think I would have liked this story if I hadn't seen the movie first but it's truly hard to believe that this is the source material. It's a short story and, if you've ever met me or have read any review I've ever left ever, you'll know that I just don't like short stories. I think that very few writers are talented enough and have the right stories to pen a good short story. They are always missing so much, the characters can't have any depth, and if it's anything other than the world you currently live it, there's no way to create a good and compelling setting.
This story got dinged on all of the above. Johnny's survival is a stroke of luck up until Bruce is on the phone and even that is lucky because Johnny happened to live long enough to hear it. There's nothing special about Johnny, which might be part of Hill's point, I guess. The villain isn't really creepy or scary. I felt like I was being told that he should be scary because he was a kidnapper. Finney's sister is mentioned but there's essentially no reason for that other than the fact that it might, possibly, MAYBE give Johnny a small bit of hope. At the end of the day, this short story was a skeleton of what it could have been... and what the movie was. The movie is a perfect response to this review because everything I disliked about the short story is blown away by the film.
This is one case where I wish the book didn't even exist and it was simply a great movie. I can't even believe I just wrote that, being a snobby book-purist. But, hey, anything can happen.