The Call (2013)
Directed by Brad Anderson
Jordan Turner is an experienced 911 operator but when she makes an error in judgment and a call ends badly, Jordan is rattled and unsure if she can continue. But when teenager Casey Welson is abducted in the back of a man's car and calls 911, Jordan is the one called upon to use all of her experience, insights and quick thinking to help Casey escape, and not just to save her, but to make sure the man is brought to justice.
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26 films that influenced The Call
What critics say influenced The Call
It is, however, more like a weak episode of TV’s “Criminal Minds” than Jonathan Demme’s great 1991 Oscar winner “The Silence of the Lambs,” a landmark film of its kind from which “The Call” borrows a twist or two.
Slickly photographed by Tom Yatsko, who takes moody advantage of the long, winding stretches of roadway throughout Los Angeles and the Santa Clarita Hills, "The Call" comes very close to being a top-notch effort in the vein of 1991's "The Silence of the Lambs."
Indeed, the movie is so effectively constructed that it recalls enormous hits of decades past like Fatal Attraction and The Silence of the Lambs .
You know, the sort of thriller that wasn’t completely ridiculous, an effort in the vein of “Seven” or “The Silence of the Lambs,” an experience worthy of accolades.
The Call, directed by erstwhile indie wunderkind Brad Anderson (The Machinist, Session 9, Vanishing on 7th Street), looks and feels almost exactly like the long string of post-The Silence of the Lambs serial killer thrillers I was used to seeing as a teenager.
Director Brad Anderson (Transsiberian, Vanishing on 7th Street) keeps a tight lid on the chase, and even when Richard D’Ovidio’s screenplay — adapted from a story he wrote with Nicole D’Ovidio and Jon Bokenkamp — ends up in The Silence of the Lambs turf the suspense never lets up.
Yet compared to the broad disposability of other phone-centric thrillers like "Phone Booth" and "Cellular," "The Call" delivers a terrifying scenario and survives its descent into nonsense.
In many ways, "The Call" resembles Joel Schumacher 's " Phone Booth " (2002) — another movie with a strong, simple premise ruined by execution (interestingly, Schumacher was originally slated to direct "The Call").
From "Phone Booth" to "Cellular" (a film with which "The Call" shares many similarities), phone-based movies have generally been bad service for moviegoers, who so often would rather look at their own mobiles in the movie theater.
In addition to showcasing the type of nutcase maniac that in the 1980s might have attracted actor Michael Ironside (see: "Visiting Hours"), "The Call" is a paean to the dedicated professionals who work the emergency-service phone banks of our urban jungles.
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.”
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Indeed, the movie is so effectively constructed that it recalls enormous hits of decades past like Fatal Attraction and The Silence of the Lambs .
A pastiche of classic plot devices scrounged from The Taking of Pelham One Two Three, The Conversation, Blue Velvet, and dozens of other movies, the story often feels familiar, but director Anderson (The Machinist) has such a flair for suspense that even the most jaded viewers will find themselves in a sweat.
Or Jennifer 8. Or Kiss the Girls.
At its best, The Call's exaggeratedly close-quarters photography makes it resemble a second-rate Michael Mann film, the camerawork a pale imitation of Dion Beebe's groundbreaking work on Collateral and Miami Vice .
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Abigail Breslin ("Zombieland") plays Casey, the girl in the trunk, and brings us in there with her better than Ryan Reynolds did in the coffin of "Buried."
My sense is that Anderson is trying to replicate the kind of taut, claustrophobic intensity evident in the underappreciated Buried .
At its best, The Call's exaggeratedly close-quarters photography makes it resemble a second-rate Michael Mann film, the camerawork a pale imitation of Dion Beebe's groundbreaking work on Collateral and Miami Vice .