The Black Phone (2022) - Movie Review

Ethan Hawke is one of my favourite actors working today. While he certainly has the skill to back up that kind of acclaim, my love for the guy’s work comes mainly out of how insanely eclectic he is. The Northman, Cut Throat City, The Truth, Stockholm, Valerian And The City Of A Thousand Planets, The Magnificent Seven, Predestination, Boyhood; not only is the man up for pretty much anything a director could possibly throw at him, but he’s also willing to go into unexpected international corners to spread the love around. So when news hit of him being cast as the villain in a horror flick, hell yeah, I was on board for that… but while Hawke certainly delivered, it’s a testament to just how good this film is that he ends up being at the lower end of this film’s positives.

In The Tall Grass (2019) - Movie Review

Write a story about two people in a room. For the entirety of that story, these two never leave that room. There is nothing in it except for themselves. There is nothing that they can do except interact, either through basic conversation or something more… physical. There might be flashbacks to their lives before entering that room, but otherwise, this is where the story takes place. This one room with just two people in it.

Sounds boring, right? Well, it’s one of the more classic tests of great filmmaking: Take that conceit and make it interesting. And writer/director Vincenzo Natali, when he isn’t making genre flicks about bioengineered rape shenanigans (seriously, Splice is a weird movie), has made a career out of pushing that idea to its breaking point. From the theological twists of Cube to the existential dramedy Nothing, whose most memorable scenes show two people in a void of bright white nothingness, he knows how to do a lot with very little scenery. If there was any Stephen King story he'd choose to adapt, of course it’d be this one.