By: Beverly Stinson

*Warning: This review contains spoilers

‘The Black Phone’ is a thriller-drama movie released on June 24th, 2022. It’s about a 13-year-old boy who gets kidnapped by a serial kidnapper and communicates with the ghosts of the kidnapper’s past victims to help him escape. This film is rated ‘R’ for violence, bloody images, profanity, and drug use.

The main charecter in this movie is a 13-year-old boy named Finney Blake. He lives in a small town with his sister and father. He and his sister have a troubled home life with their father being an alcoholic and violent. Finney often gets bullied at school but receives help from Robin Arellano his best friend.

During the first part of the movie multiple kids go missing, most of which are kids Finney knows in some way. It then leads up to Finney’s kidnapping, where after he’s been taken, he wakes up in a small room in a basement. Inside the basement is a bed, toilet, and a black phone. The kidnapper (known as “The Grabber”) continuously speaks to Finney, seemingly trying to make small talk. The Grabber mentions the phone and how it doesn’t work.

Even though The Grabber states that the phone doesn’t work, it eventually starts ringing, and when Finney picks it up, the voice of a kid speaks through the phone; the kid being one of The Grabbers victims. After that, The Grabber’s other victims start calling him, with all of them giving him tips on how to escape.

Finney’s sister Gwen is a major character in this movie. When Finney goes missing, she tries to find him with some new senses that she has.

‘My review’
When I first saw the trailers for ‘The Black Phone’, I didn’t think I’d watch it. I’m not so big on thriller or horror, especially movies that have to do with kidnapping. But after a year of it being out, I decided to watch it (mostly because of edits of characters I saw). But before watching it, I had done so much research that I spoiled everything for myself, which isn’t the first time I’ve done that.

I do wanna say even though it’s already mentioned in the R rating that this movie does have a lot of violent scenes, some of which are of Finney and Gwen’s father. So, if that’s a hard topic for you then take caution when reading.

So, even though I was skeptical about watching it at first, I will honestly say that it’s a great movie. There’s always so much suspense and the storyline of not just Finney’s story but also Gwen’s and the ghost boys is so thought out. I love how they mix a realistic scenario with the supernatural; when movies or shows do that it makes it more interesting and original.

I like how they touch on bad households with both the siblings and The Grabber. It is said that The Grabber ends up the way he is because of how his father treated him. He started kidnapping 13-14-year-old boys who he deemed bad, to punish them like his father did to him. Which ya-know, does not justify his actions in any way. Actually, as I’m getting into the fandom, I’m noticing that no one really likes him, and that’s actually pretty surprising to me as I am also in fandoms like ‘Scream’ and ‘IT’ and even though the villains in those movies did bad things, the fandom still seems to like them (myself included).

And other than the siblings and The Grabber, one other character apparently had a troubled home life as well, this character being Vance Hopper, who is actually my favorite character. Vance doesn’t have a lot of scenes but based off of his character, and what the actors have said, you can kinda guess how his life is.

A lot of people might say that this is a lot for one movie, but seeing as how it’s based in the late 70s it’s sorta realistic. Since back then it was more acceptable to treat your kids that way, or at least people didn’t talk about it as much.

I really think it’s great that they talk about it, because tons of movies try to dodge topics like that instead of facing them.

So, this next thing I like about it does include some spoilers so take caution!

My favorite part of the entire movie was the ghost boys; in total there are 5. In order they are:

1. Griffin Stagg
2. Billy Showalter
3. Vance Hopper
4. Bruce Yamada
5. Robin Arellano

There would’ve been 6 but the ghost boys wanted to make sure there wasn’t.

There were all different reasons why the grabber took them but all of them are summed up to them being “bad boys”, at least in his eyes. For example, Vance Hopper AKA Pinball Vance, was an extremely violent person, and was a bully. In one scene, he beats up two kids after one of them bumped into him while he was playing pinball, which caused him to lose. He is said to be a borderline sociopath (I don’t believe that but I’m biased).

I would also like to mention the cast as I really love the cast. I really think they couldn’t have done better with the cast; the actors fit the roles so well. My favorite actors are definitely Brady Hepner (Vance), Mason Thames (Finney), and Tristan Pravong (Bruce).

Ever since I got into the fandom I’ve been watching their Instagram lives and watching interviews and they are so awesome. Sadly, they aren’t in a lot of movies or shows, which is so funny because it always seems like the actors I love aren’t in a lot of things.

If you like suspenseful movies, I’d recommend you watch this movie. It does have a little comedy in it if you don’t only like plain thrillers. Remember that it is rated R and that you should be cautious when watching with children or if you are sensitive to blood or violence.

Thank you for reading my review and I hope you enjoy the movie if you decide to watch it. Hopefully my review makes you want to watch it ❤

You can watch ‘The Black Phone’ on Peacock.

By: Abisola Dosunmu

‘A Good Girl’s Guide To Murder’ by Holly Jackson, is coming to the big screen as a television series soon. As of October 2023, there is still no set premiere date. It will be set to air on BBC Three.

So, what do we know so far? Well, the cast has been released. Emma Myers and Zain Iqbal are set to be playing the main characters, Pip and Ravi. The author of the series, Holly Jackson, is well aware of the casting choices for the characters, and has been enthusiastic about it, even speaking out on it, saying, “I am so unbelievably excited that Emma is our Pip. She is phenomenal and this role was truly always meant to be hers. And we found our perfect Ravi in Zain. I can’t wait for us all to be able to watch their scenes. I smile every time I see them together, because I know that we’ve pulled off the impossible, and Emma and Zain are the only two people I would trust to bring these characters to life. Everyone’s going to be just as thrilled as I am.”

So, what’s the book about? Pippa Fitz-Amobi is the 17-year-old protagonist in the book, reinvestigating the death of a beautiful teenage girl named Andie Bell, who was allegedly killed by her boyfriend Sal Singh five years ago in her quiet hometown. Ravi Singh is the younger brother of Sal, a member of a family still broken by their elder son’s death and presumed murder. Together, Pippa and Ravi, working together over a long cold case, work to solve the mystery that has divided their town, and with that, finally put Sal and Andies’ lives to rest. But secrets are too interwoven with each other in their tiny town, and time is running out. The mystery the readers must figure out is, are things really as they seem?

Some other details about the upcoming series is that it’s being filmed in the South West of England, and ‘A Good Girl’s Guide To Murder’ is the first in a trilogy, featuring two other books named, ‘Good Girl, Bad Blood’ and ‘As Good as Dead’.

By M. Ahmadad

“Stunning animation sparks this cross-cultural, high-concept ‘Romeo & Juliet’ romantic comedy, inspired by the periodic chart of elements that one recalls from science class.” (Critic Susan Granger on ‘Elemental’)

‘Elemental’ is one of the most recent Pixar films, released in June 2023. Despite receiving a 75% on Rotten Tomatoes and being generally seen by the media as a cute, likable, and enjoyable film with a nice plot, the movie suffered an unfortunate flop.

The first opening weekend for ‘Elemental’ only made $29 million, and over the span of two months grossed $425 million worldwide. The budget for the movie’s creation was $200 million dollars, so the profit made was much smaller than other Pixar films opening weekend, like ‘Inside Out’ or ‘Coco’.

Prior to the movie’s release, people were skeptical about ‘Elemental’ and didn’t have high hopes. Now that the movie is released, a lot of people are actually quite satisfied with it; the movie having a 4.2 star rating.

The problem likely stems from the promotional marketing strategy for ‘Elemental’. Fans were already skeptical about newer animated children’s films from Disney/Pixar, so seeing the first teaser for ‘Elemental’ made already wary people form assumptions about how the film would go.

The trailers and ads on social media, like TikTok, did not attempt to showcase the two main characters and the chemistry between them, which was the highlight of the actual film. Instead, they tried to go the comedy route and advertise a minor side character, in hopes that he would be endearing to viewers.

However, Clod has less than 3 minutes of screen time in the actual movie, so the amount of time they spent promoting this character lead to people finding it misleading. There was even a short-lived meme where people made sarcastic comments behaving like they cared about Clod, saying that they screamed when he came on screen and cried.

It is generally agreed that the marketing of this movie was not up to par, considering that the trailers decided not to promote much of anything about the two main characters and their relationship, which was the highlight of the actual film.

So, while ‘Elemental’ may not have been given the chance to shine, many people think it’s a touching and beautifully animated film. If you’re considering watching it, it’s recommended to not keep the ads in mind.

You can watch ‘Elemental’ on Disney+.