Not many people can attest to having to present an idea to the great Alfred Hitchcock, and only had it rejected after intense deliberation resulted in neither the director nor writer being able to come up with a feasible way of making the film’s premise work, but where Hitchcock himself was so interested in the idea that he continuously checked back over the years to see if any progress had been made to help work around the logical difficulties associated with such a film. Despite being one of the great cult filmmakers of his generation, the most interesting concept Larry Cohen ever had was the situation that surrounded Phone Booth, a film he actively pursued for decades before finally having his screenplay adapted after a suitable use of the premise could be found. The plot could not be more simple – a seemingly ordinary man decides to enter a phone booth on a busy New York City street in broad daylight, only to discover that he is being watched by some mysterious stranger, who speaks to him through this telephone, their conversation going from mildly sinister to outwardly terrifying, especially after it becomes clear that our nameless, anonymous caller has a rifle aimed directly at our protagonist, and is certainly not afraid to use it, especially in demonstrating his willingness to take a life when he kills an innocent person, simply to show that he is serious about the threats he so proudly delivers, almost as if we can see him smirking through the joy contained entirely in his voice. Phone Booth is one of the rare examples of a high-concept thriller that is made even more effective by the fact that it is extremely simple. Cohen’s career was defined by his tendency to be direct about the subjects that his films explored, and while it may not have been produced as he originally intended it to be (although he was always working on a paper-thin premise that depended on a crucial plot point that took decades to figure out), it certainly aligned with his own values, working closely with Joel Schumacher, who ultimately emerged as the person to bring this ambitious and brilliant story to the screen, in what was to become one of the best thrillers of the current century.

With the exception of the concept of a sniper (which was the critical plot point that caused the film to be delayed for decades), this is very clearly a concept that aligned with Hitchcock’s vision as a filmmaker, with the use of a limited location and a story executed in real time to only amplify the suspense being heavily inspired by his own masterful work, and it is truly unfortunate that he and Cohen were never able to make the premise work at the time in which it was first proposed. However, Schumacher was certainly not a director who lacked acclaim when it came to more ambitious productions, and taking on Cohen’s revised script, he delivers one of the most affecting, complex thrillers of the past two decades, a bleak and maniacal psychological drama that draws on the darkest recesses of the human condition, playing on every one of our deepest fears as it explores, in real-time, a man teetering dangerously close on a nervous breakdown as he not only is confronted with his previous shortcomings and misdeeds, but his own mortality, which is described to him in vivid detail as he grows more anxious about whether or not he is going to emerge from this phone booth alive, or if this is his final stand, and that he will fall victim to some distant entity that converses with him, to the point where The Killers (as he is credited) becomes the embodiment of both the saviour and punisher. All of this is tied together neatly in this tense and harrowing thriller that runs at a mere 80 minutes (the perfect length for such a compact, tightly-constructed drama), and which never needs to be too overly reliant on peripheral elements to supplement a story that worked best as a very simple, straightforward narrative, rather than a winding maze of several interweaving ideas, which would have detracted from the striking simplicity of a film that quite simply didn’t need to be anything more than a punchy, impactful story of existential despair, delivered in real-time and in vivid detail.

Phone Booth often plays like a horror film, with the feeling of existential dread being perhaps its most impressive element outside of the fact that Schumacher managed to make such an effortlessly complex thriller without relying on complex narrative turns or major directorial flourishes. With the exception of the first few minutes (which are still set on the streets of New York City), and some very brief, momentary diversions that last only a few seconds, the entire film takes place in and around the vicinity of a phone booth, and it is almost entirely told in real-time, which is clearly where the Hitchcockian allure originated. Many of the greatest horror films of all time have been set in a single location, which is primarily because they evoke a sense of existential dread, the kind of compressed anxiety that anyone who has suffered from even mild claustrophobia will be all too familiar with, and which Cohen and Schumacher use to the benefit of this story, which is not aiming to be terrifying so much as it is actively unsettling, which is exactly the state every viewer should ideally position themselves in, since so much of the film depends on that feeling of almost unbearable tension, which leads to a harrowing climax that may be quite obvious, but still exudes that feeling of active fear and despair. The idea of being not only watched by some insidious, psychopathic individual, but actively taunted by them is effective enough on its own to be a strong premise for the film – but setting the film on a crowded street in one of the busiest cities in the world, in the middle of the day, but still evoking that sense of disquieting terror is a great achievement, and something that can only have been achieved through the perfect combination of an excellent screenplay and strong direction, making the pairing of Cohen and Schumacher one that is unexpected but utterly ingenious – and coincidentally, both were filmmakers that achieved more acclaim in retrospectives and the ensuing conversations that occurred after their deaths, having been unnecessarily reviled or criticized while they were active, despite being exceptionally gifted in their chosen fields. Phone Booth is yet another example of their excellence as storytellers, and has appropriately been revisited as not only a solid thriller, but a great piece of genre filmmaking overall.

However, we can’t only limit the effectiveness of Phone Booth to Cohen’s excellent script or Schumacher’s firm command of the material, since there is a third element that combines everything together brilliantly. Colin Farrell has appropriately had his career reconsidered, and is now seen as one of our finest actors, someone who can effortlessly oscillate between dedicated character actor with a chameleonic ability to disappear into even the most abstract of roles, and a true movie star who could sell an entire film based solely on his undeniable charisma. However, there was a time when he was viewed as nothing more than someone forced into the minds of viewers by over-zealous producers intent on giving him a career by any means necessary. In hindsight, we have to appreciate these efforts, since they allowed Farrell to take on even more interesting work later on in his career, which led us to the present moment, where nearly everything he does is extremely interesting. Phone Booth is often unfairly lumped with the almost anonymous blockbusters and genre films he made earlier in his career, by virtue of being a thriller that he made long before people were viewing him as a genuinely gifted actor – and ultimately, it is easy to make that mistake, even in hindsight. However, perspective is always a great tool for re-assessing an actor’s career, since despite the reputation he had at the time (as well as the unfair criticisms levelled against him), the same level of dedication and raw, unfiltered complexity is present in his performance here. It may not be a role that requires him to draw on the subtle notes that have defined his more acclaimed performances, but considering the majority of Phone Booth entails Farrell talking to himself (Kiefer Sutherland’s voice as The Killer was added later in post-production), he deserves every bit of credit for so effectively playing this character. It could not have been an easy role to play – outside of the technical aspects of needing to act in a limited space, and where his main scene partner was a telephone receiver, Farrell also needed to convince us, in quite a short span of time, that this is an individual who goes from a cocksure, confident man-about-time, to a shivering, insecure bundle of nerves and paranoia, in the span of only an hour – and he sells absolutely every moment of it, turning in an astounding and unexpectedly complex performance that makes sense from a modern perspective, making us wonder why we ever doubted his skills in the first place – the fact that he so effectively managed to turn in such a strong performance, despite the constraints of a limited setting and mainly acting alone in the majority of scenes (since the interactions between him and the other actors are minimal, by design) should have been the first major hint that he is one of our most gifted working actors.

Phone Booth is an absolutely fantastic film – a complex, thrilling and very meaningful leap into the world of psychological thrillers written by someone who may have been best known for his more intentionally manufactured, artificial productions, but who wrote this story for arguably the great director in the history of the English language, who unfortunately departed before he gets the opportunity to make the film, based solely on the fact that they couldn’t get it quite right at the time. This film makes us wonder how many lacklustre genre films would have benefitted from being placed on the shelf and revisited years or decades later, where the progress of time revealing new ways to address particularly troublesome aspects. Some concepts are too promising to be made immediately, especially when the most interesting ideas that define their works didn’t even exist when they were written – and keeping Phone Booth aside for over thirty years allowed Cohen to make the film that he originally envisioned as his tribute to Hitchcock, which was here helmed by another very creative and criminally underrated director, who uses his penchant for maximalist cinema to explore these primary themes, as well as adding on a few further elements that may date this film to a very particular moment (the emphasis on phone booths being the primary source of communication in New York City in 2002 is almost delightfully absurd now, considering how it represents such an old-fashioned medium, but one that was still very relevant at the time), but which is still so wonderfully effective and utterly thrilling. It’s worth seeing just for the tension that arises, and witnessing the astonishing effort that goes into orchestrating this narrative and bringing it to life, which is done through the three-way impact of Cohen’s high-concept screenplay, Schumacher’s masterful direction and Farrell’s spirited performance – each are equally important, and become symbiotic in the process of taking this fascinating idea and turning it into a complex, well-crafted psychological thriller that may seem slight at first, but carries far more weight than initially meets the eye, which is where many of the most captivating surprises are lurking.