Impressive performances help an uneven plot in this 70s-set kidnap horror based on a story by Stephen King’s son Joe Hill
ere is a supernatural shocker that amounts to a queasy, nasty and perfectly serviceable horror-homage to Stephen King; it is in fact based on a 2004 short story by the author’s son, Joe Hill. The setting is north Denver, in the double-denim world of the late 70s, and a small town is in fear of a serial abductor nicknamed “the Grabber”, played in a gruesome mask by Ethan Hawke. He is targeting teenage boys, reportedly driving around in clown gear with black balloons in his van.
Finney Shaw is a shy kid, good at mathematics and baseball whose widower dad is a depressive alcoholic and whose smart kid sister Gwen appears to have inherited her late mother’s gift of second sight. When the Grabber takes Finney, he holds him prisoner in a scuzzy basement room with a weird wall-mounted black dialler phone which is apparently disconnected.
This is watchable entertainment that achieves a reasonable altitude with its jump-scares, and whose suspense-thriller aspect keeps it engaging on a human level: but there’s a kind of plot issue in the film’s second act, with Finney’s terrified life as the Grabber’s prisoner in which he seems to be able to get away with an enormous amount of undetected escape preparation.
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