Cellular (2004)
Directed by David R. Ellis
A young man receives an emergency phone call on his cell phone from an older woman. She claims to have been kidnapped – and the kidnappers have targeted her husband and child next.
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What critics compared Cellular to
Representing a slightly skewed take on 2004’s “Cellular” crossed with a lobotomized “ Silence of the Lambs ,” Brad Anderson ’s high-concept thriller “ The Call ” would be an unremarkable bit of women-in-peril dreck were it not for two distinguishing factors — the sexualized sadism inflicted upon the half-dressed 16-year-old Abigail Breslin, and the equally sadistic Sideshow Bob coiffure affixed to the otherwise lovely Halle Berry .
While the story is as head-shakingly ridiculous as the likes of Cellular (2004), Berry’s character’s brutal, though improbable, determination keeps the intensity high.
Like 2004’s Cellular, another enjoyable chiller built around crime and mobile technology, The Call is the rare horror film in the last decade or so to forgo metaphysics, the supernatural, and source material that was first a hit in Asia.
You’ve seen pieces of this movie in “Psycho,” “Silence of the Lambs,” and 2004’s “Cellular.”
He’s no David R. Ellis, late purveyor of superior B-movie trashiness like Cellular .
Muy lejos de los mejores exponentes del formato en cuestión, espectro que abarca desde lo estadounidense hiper demagógico aunque disfrutable de Enlace Mortal ( Phone Booth , 2002), de Joel Schumacher, y Celular ( Cellular , 2004), de David R. Ellis, ambas escritas por el querido Larry Cohen, hasta la pata europea más verosímil de El Desconocido (2015), del español Dani de la Torre, y La Culpa ( Den Skyldige , 2018), del sueco Gustav Möller, la primera sostenida en una gran actuación de Luis Tosar y la segunda en una equivalente de Jakob Cedergren, Desesperada cuenta con un metraje de apenas 84 minutos pero aun así aburre con su colección de conversaciones previsibles, flashbacks melosos/ lacrimógenos, situaciones repetidas y un background de cartón pintado para cada uno de los personajes, combo que no consigue corregir una Watts también productora que literalmente es lo único bueno de la película del australiano Noyce, quien empezó a dirigir en la frontera espiritual entre el ozploitation y la…
The movie also is similar to and lesser than the lunacy in Adrian Lyne’s shocker “Jacob’s Ladder’’ or the overcooked nonsense of the 2004 B-movie “Cellular,’’ in which Chris Evans tries to save Kim Basinger’s life through a mobile phone connection.
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In 2004, it was “Cellular.”
Not that it matters, because David R. Ellis, a seasoned second-unit director ("The Matrix Reloaded," "Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone") moving up to the director's chair, wouldn't know what to do with actual characters even if "Cellular" had any.
Helmer David Richard Ellis has a short resume as a director, with the 2003 thriller Final Destination 2 being first feature, but his work as 2nd unit director on films such as Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone , The Perfect Storm and The Patriot attests to his flair for action and suspense.