DON’T HANG UP

Finney lives in North Denver and loves baseball. The year is 1978, long before cellphones and videogames. A time when adolescents like him are forced to create their own fun or risk giving into boredom. And worse.

This is also a story where the adults aren’t good for much, which means when Finney and his teenage buddies are confronted by an evil kidnapper, they must resort to banding together. Think “Stand By Me,” but much, much scarier. And if you care about such things, “The Black Phone” is based on a short story by Stephen King’s son, Joe Hill.

Finney and his sister Gwen live with their widowed father, an alcoholic mess still grieving over his late wife’s suicide. But instead of suffering in private, dear old dad takes out his rage on the kids, often viciously beating Gwen with a belt.

She retreats into dreams and they become more disturbing, with visions of a black van and black balloons. And that draws the attention of the local police.

Because a rash of child abductions has the community on edge and all remain unsolved. So far, the only clues are black balloons left behind at crime scenes.

Poor Finney has his own troubles. He’s bullied to a terrible degree by a tough kid named Bruce. He’s not without allies, though. Another tough kid named Robin becomes his protector. Until both Robin and Bruce disappear.

And then the focus is on Finney. Walking home from school, he, too, is drugged and kidnapped by a man driving a black van. He winds up in a soundproof cellar. A dungeon equipped with little more than a mattress, a toilet and a disconnected phone on one wall.

The villain in all this is The Grabber, played with a grisly gusto by Ethan Hawke. Throughout, he wears a series of masks, some obscuring his face and others that don’t quite do the trick.

The Grabber tests his teenage victims, putting them through a series of sadistic challenges in the hope they fail so he can abuse them. The creepiness here is dialed up to 11.

But just when all seems lost, the black phone, though disconnected, begins to ring. On the other end are the ghosts of The Grabber’s victims, giving Finney tips on how to escape the madman and his house of horrors.

Eventually, Finney learns to stand up for himself. It’s either that or he's permanently disconnected.