The Black Phone

After seeing this movie two weeks ago, I immediately ordered the short story collection for my fiancé and I. We wanted to see how similar or different it was due to the fact that it's a full length movie. So far I've only read just this story, but I'll definitely be going back for the others at some point. 

Honestly the author does a pretty good job of getting right into it. With only twenty-something pages how can you not really, but still. It starts with the abduction, and everything that follows is very fast paced. It would be surprising to lose my interest in just 20 pages, but still the author does a great job of making it feel heightened and intense. 

The biggest change in this from page to screen is that the kidnapper is a part-time clown in the story. Which of course they were afraid would read too much like an IT rip because of who the author is. Meanwhile the story itself is very John Wayne Gacy itself, so a clown was unfortunately spot on. Anyway, in the movie he's a part-time magician to compensate. The stuff they expounded upon was entirely from the short story itself. The baseball scene, other abductions, the sister's sense. The dialogue is mostly entirely from the story itself. They did a pretty fantastic job adapting honestly. 

In the first story, a character says of the genre, “In horror, it’s often what you leave out that gives a story its power.” This phrase does a lot of heavy lifting for some of the stories contained in this collection. That’s not necessarily a bad thing. Most of the horror in the book is super unsettling and leaves the reader wanting more.

Just one more thing I’d like to add before I jump into the individual stories: I don’t know what it is with Joe Hill or his dad but my goodness, each story of the first half of the collection has a jab at a disgusting fat person. What is the obsession?

Best New Horror - A story about a story. Both scary and unsettling. Good opening.

20th Century Ghost - A story about the love of cinema and nostalgia as much as it is a ghost story. Excellent.

Pop Art - Super unique tale of an inflatable best friend. Great from start to finish.

You Will Hear the Locust Sing - Like a Rated R Goosebumps story

Abraham’s Boys - The next Van Helsing generation. Not a great story, but good take and twist at the end.

Better Than Home - Fatherly love and baseball. No horror or suspense.

The Black Phone - It blows my mind that a 20 page story can get expanded into two films. Mediocre compared to some of the others, but probably the most adaptable, I guess.

In the Rundown - Feels incomplete but the ending was pretty crazy.

The Cape - Probably my least favorite of the bunch. Kid has a homemade cape that helps him fly, doesn’t understand.

Last Breath - One of the shortest stories but one of the best. It didn’t need to carry on for 100 pages. Self-aware with a crazy ending.

Dead-Wood - short poem about tree ghosts

The Widow’s Breakfast - Not really sure what to think about this one. Kinda rambled on.

Bobby Conroy Comes Back From the Dead - A man and woman are nostalgic for one another on the set of Dawn of the Dead

My Father’s Mask - One of the craziest things I’ve ever read. This story creeped me the hell out. Would love to get a short sequel or full story expansion.

Voluntary Committal - Very good concept and well done. Didn’t love the beginning or ending but the middle was very good.

Scheherazade’s Typewriter - very short story jammed into the acknowledgements. Very similar to something his dad would have written.