The Black Phone Ending Explained: Who Was The Kidnapper? And Where He Is Holding Finney
The Black Phone Ending Explained: Will Finney be able to escape and escape from the clutches of his captor, the evil part-time wizard who wears a Devil mask? Will Gwen’s powers help the girl, and the police locate her missing brother? Will the previous victims of the Kidnapper be decisive in lending a hand to the young protagonist? Let’s find out how The Black Phone ends, Scott Derrickson’s horror film starring Ethan Hawke as a ruthless killer of kids.
How Finney Ended Up In The Basement
1978, United States. Finney Shaw (Mason Thames) is a young boy who lives with his little sister Gwen and her father in a small town north of Denver. After the disappearance of his mother, who possessed a special divinatory gift also inherited from her daughter, Finney’s dad became an alcoholic who made life difficult for the two boys. There’s a mysterious kidnapper in town. After making a baseball player and a Mexican boy Finney befriended disappear into thin air, it’s up to him to be kidnapped. The Kidnapper loads him into a van and takes him away, locking him in a basement.
In the basement, Finney discovers that she has inherited some of her mother’s abilities. He hears an old disconnected black telephone ringing in the room where he is a prisoner. Through the telephone, he speaks with the voices of the boys who preceded him, now dead, who try in their way to help him escape. The Kidnapper also hears the phone ringing (so he has some kind of supernatural ability), but he doesn’t want to accept the fact and makes up all sorts of excuses to justify this event.
Who Was The Kidnapper? And Where He Is Holding Finney
During the film, we discover the ingenious plan with which the Kidnapper (Ethan Hawke) hides and kills the kidnapped kids. The part-time magician owns two houses, facing each other. One is vacant and emptied the other is the house where he resides. In the latter he buries his victims under quicklime pours in the basement. In the house across the street, in an underground room with a hidden entrance, he keeps the kidnapped boys before killing them.
Finney stayed alive longer than his predecessors because the Kidnapper is forced to host his brother, who has arrived by surprise in town and is convinced he can find the killer. For this reason, he must be cautious and can’t spend much time with Finney, who has a way to think about various escape strategies.
The Black Phone Ending Explained
Two very important supernatural facts happen in the film’s finale. The first has as its protagonist Gwen who, by dint of pleas to her father for help and efforts to have revealing dreams, “enters” a vision of a dead boy in which there is also her brother. She is thus able to see the house where she thinks Finney is a prisoner (the house which later turns out to be the burial place of the boys) and his house number. She jumps on her bicycle and desperately searches for the house. Soon after she warns the detectives, who believe her because she had already been able to provide clues about the killer never disclosed to the public.
However, the police arrive late and enter the wrong house. Finney, however, managed to save himself, following the advice of his friend Max (James Ransone), who kidnapped him. He fills the phone with dirt to make it heavier. When the door opens, he thinks it is the Kidnapper, instead, it is his brother who has understood the truth. The man, however, fails to save Finney, because he is brutally killed by his older brother, the serial killer, with a hatchet.
Finney, terrified, decides to react and sets up a series of traps prepared for the occasion. Eventually, he manages to drop the killer into a hole he digs in the basement. He breaks his leg and gets stuck. When Finney takes off his mask, he appears disoriented and afraid. Finney then uses the handset wire to choke him. Just before he dies, he makes him hear the voices of the boys he has killed, who await him in the afterlife. The killer’s huge dog blocks the way for the boy, who gives the animal a steak to distract him.
Having gone up to the ground floor and having opened the padlock that closed the door, Finney goes out onto the street and runs towards his sister, who is waiting for him on the sidewalk. Shortly thereafter, the father arrives and finds the children alive and safe. He kneels and asks their forgiveness. The two boys look at each other in silence, perhaps doubtful about their father’s possibility of really changing.
