The Black Phone

 It's a risky endeavor to expand a short story to fill out a film. There are many ways to do this - you add characters, you draw things out, you expand on some aspects or add b-plots... my favorite example of how to do this is Stuart Gordon's From Beyond, which uses up the story it's supposedly adapting before the starting credits roll; the rest is a (characteristically) bonkers story wholly cooked up in Gordon's evil, twisted brain.
 The Black Phone, adapting an extremely lean thirty-page Joe Hill story, is a great example on how to do it the right way; most of the additions are solid, and they build towards a theme that wasn't there in the source material (I think! It's been a long time since I read it.)

 Taking place somewhere in suburban America during the '70s, the movie tracks the story of pre-teen Finney as he navigates a gauntlet of peer and domestic abuse, and later, an abduction by a serial killer who kidnaps and kills children. That's where he runs into the titular phone, which lets him communicate with the ghosts of victims past. Between them, they try to figure out a way to escape, while his sister never gives up hope and uses some unreliable psychic powers to try and track him down.

 The late 70s slightly-run-down americana setting is evoked beautifully with subdued colors, great production design, iconic (but not too well-known) period song choices, and some outstandingly greasy-looking teens. It's not exactly naturalistic - this is a world where a kid beats down a bully using martial arts moves, or a teen pulls a knife at a corner shop brawl (who wrote this, a Daily Sun columnist?) - but it captures the feel and anxieties of teen-hood very well. Everything is heightened, fraught, exaggerated.

 Some stylistic choices I didn't much care for, but the tone is much more controlled and well maintained than the (terrible) trailers would lead you to think. There's a lot to like here; Director Scott Derrickson and Robert Cargill continue to make for a great team.

 Ethan Hawke gives it his all, as he always does. He plays the main antagonist, but he's not even in the movie all that much; just a human-shaped blob of pure evil who's there to move things along, never really taking the spotlight. Most of the time hidden behind a mask. This is not his movie.

 The film rests entirely on child actors to carry it - and luckily, they're all great. The actor playing the protagonist gives a brilliant, very internal performance. The younger sister is also excellent - I wasn't a fan of how precocious her character was, but that's on the script, not on her; she gets one of the most upsetting scenes in the movie, and it's very much thanks to her acting chops. Hopefully this will put them both on the radar. The other kids are great, too.

 The Black Phone takes its sweet time before the actual black phone enters the picture, but it's time well spent introducing several characters and their world, raising the emotional stakes for when things inevitably get worse. This is, along with raising the number of ghosts imprisoned with Finney, one of the biggest additions to Joe Hill's short story. It's a smart call; it shows how Finney and his sister rely on each other to tough things out, something that will resonate when he's later helped by the Grabber's previous victims. It's a sweet message, and powerful.