The Call

I was surprised to see that THE CALL, an ultra-predictable Hollywood kidnap thriller, was directed by Brad Anderson, the guy who once made the likes of SESSION 9 and THE MACHINIST. Boy, what a fall from grace, from making genuinely stylish and provoking cinema to being a mere directed for hire on cookie cutter Hollywood flicks. The problem with THE CALL is that it's all been done before and done better. The story is about your usual garden variety psychopath who likes breaking into houses, kidnapping teenage girls, torturing them, and then dumping the bodies. The extremely shrill and annoying Halle Berry plays an emergency call operator who becomes involved with the killer when she attempts to save a couple of girls who ring her for help. The film becomes a battle of wits of sorts between Berry and the bad guy, with pretty teenage victim Abigail Breslin (HAUNTER) trapped in the middle. It sounds like it has potential but it's really a bore for the most part; I can't stand Berry's style of acting and she gets way too much screen time here. The villain character is never developed beyond the most basic and Breslin has little to do except strip down and run around in her bra. THE CALL gets particularly cheesy and ridiculous at the oh-so-typical climax, which is a thorough exercise in clichéd box-ticking.

"The Call" is an average thriller that promises more than it can deliver. At some points, I wondered how the film could be improved if it was a novel instead of a screenplay, as the writer really did indicate some ability in crafting his characters and developing an engaging story. I thought the villain's understated backstory had so much potential if only a more talented actor were given the role and time allowed to develop his identity. Unfortunately, The Call only offers brief glimpses into his troubled mind that could have been much improved on. The Call is desperate to get to the chase, and rushes through exposition without giving us an insight into the lives and personalities of the cast. There are some interesting characters who are given just minutes (or seconds) of screen time who could have contributed to the plot, like "Terrence", a disturbed but entertaining ex-con who frequently calls our heroine in a drunken stupor. Unfortunately, the potential for a subplot is wasted as Terrence disappears after the first act, never to be mentioned again. He, like many others in The Call, could have helped elevate the film to greater heights than the final cut. Other than poorly realised characters and a rushed feel, The Call also suffers from childish direction that one would usually expect from a first year film student. Rapid close ups and filters are the order of the day, sapping the energy and excitement from set pieces which should be suspenseful and nail-biting, but are demoted by full-screen close ups of teeth, grimaces and rolling eyeballs for poor dramatic effect. That being said, it's not all bad. You can see the potential in every scene being steadily wasted by a writer trying to meet a deadline and producers who want to appeal to the limited attention spans of younger audiences. Oh, and the ending? You'll have to watch it to see just how terrible it is.

This started out as a generic story well-told by a solid cast. Halle Berry and Abigail Breslin had great chemistry over the phone, their dynamic backed up by a lot of solid supporting actors and even having me tear up a bit as the two of them bond in the crucible of Breslin's ordeal. The movie's runtime didn't leave much room for establishing character, but that's okay, sometimes its better to focus on the story. But then I get to the end, and the suspension bridge of disbelief suddenly snaps out from underneath me as the movie takes me waaaaay offroad. To sum up the ending: Halle Berry drops her phone down a hole leading to the serial killer's secret lair when she goes to call 911, so she climbs down to grab it leading to a short game of cat and mouse that ends with her pulling Breslin out just in the nick of time. All very familiar territory so far (even if I was screaming at the screen for her just to climb back up the ladder and finish calling for help to the nearby cops) but then after facing the bad guy and saving the girl in the big scary climax, the two of them team up to turn what was a heartfelt and poignant connection into a twisted revenge fantasy. Breslin, who to that point had been well-acting the part of a typical teenage girl, suddenly goes rogue and stops the dedicated 911 operator from dialing 911 so that the two of them can GO BACK DOWN THE HOLE and trap the bad guy in his own lair truss him up to die. ...huh? This 'twist' (if you can call it that) was so unexpected, unwarranted, and abrupt that it was like walking face-first into a sliding glass door that you thought was open, like they turfed the original ending and brought in the writer of Saw to shake things up a bit. Lets talk about consequences here. The ADULT and supposed professional Berry, who had up to that point been nothing but a decent human being, helps the TEENAGE Breslin commit murder. An act the poor girl will have to live with the rest of her life, setting aside the trauma of being abducted and nearly scalped in the first place. But worse than that, they told the world that the SERIAL KILLER had simply disappeared. Which would mean no closure for the families of his other victims, many of whom were likely unidentified as there were a lot of scalps in that mini-fridge. AND EVEN WORSE THAN THAT! The ending we are left with shows the empathetic 911 operator, whose very job requires her to deal with people on a daily basis who are terrified for their lives, happily willing to leave a whole city of people to live in constant fear of a dead man. All so that the writers could find a way to throw a lame pithy line back in the bad guy's face. Sigh. 3 Stars. Would have been 8, but for the truly terrible ending.