Posted By Iain McNally on March 15, 2013

In The Call, Halle Berry stars as Jordan Turner, a 911 operator who appears to be able to handle the ups and downs of her job with ease, until a young girl calls reporting a prowler breaking into her house. A mistake on Jordan’s part, coupled with her inability to do anything from the call centre and the play by play of the following events, shake Jordan’s professional detachment and drive her into training and away from dealing with callers.

When 6 months later, a very similar call happens; a still fragile Jordan is forced to take over as Casey Welson (Abigail Breslin from Little Miss Sunshine & Zombieland) calls 911 from the trunk of a kidnapper’s car. The kidnapper has already disposed of Casey’s phone, so she’s calling on a disposable phone her friend had left behind, which unfortunately cannot be traced immediately (it would be a very short movie if it could!)
As the trace request procedure goes into action, Jordan has to stay on the line, working with Casey to come up with plans to try and draw attention to the car and receive help. Will Jordan be able to help or will this story end, as we are told so many do for 911 operators, without closure?

One of the worst sins a movie can commit is have its characters do or say something that immediately takes you out of the movie. If you’ve ever found yourself watching a thriller and screaming at the screen when the hero/heroine is in peril and resolutely ignoring the most obvious or safest course of action, then you know what I’m talking about. The Call seems to at least try and avoid this. With Jordan’s help, Casey actually tries some things to draw attention to the kidnapper’s car, some of which pleasantly surprised me and none of which took me out of the movie. In fact, each time I got close to disengaging from the film, it seemed to address the problems I was having with it. Just as I was beginning to wonder what kind of magic battery would allow a phone call to go on this long, the filmmakers quickly include a shot of the not-unreasonable call time. There’s even a moment at the beginning of the film where the old horror trope of hiding from intruders under the bed is brought up, but is dealt with in a knowing way that nicely confounded my expectations. Maybe I’m giving the film too much credit here but I wasn’t expecting too much going in and my already lowered expectations took a further dive when one of the first things seen in the film is the logo for WWE Studios.

Like Phone Booth, which had a similarly limited set up, director Brad Anderson (The Machinist) prevents the movie from degenerating into a series of talky scenes between a girl in a trunk and a call centre operator by adding a number of complications to Casey’s efforts to get rescued, and introduce a few hitches to the kidnapper’s efforts to get to his safe house. On Jordan’s side, she’s ably assisted by some other call operators, an initially unsympathetic appearing boss (Roma Maffia), her cop boyfriend (Morris Chestnut) out in the field and the rest of the LAPD, which keeps the action moving, and for a time the film almost becomes a nice tight ensemble piece.

Only in the third act does Jordan feel the need to take things into her own hands (in order to provide the required thriller showdown), but even here the filmmakers seem to at least try to come up with reasons why she wanders into the jaws of danger instead of just having her blindly waltz in. She goes somewhere the kidnapper is not supposed to be and once she realises the danger, she does actually try to get back up, but messes it up due to her own nervousness/clumsiness. As for the serial killer himself, while he’s initially shot out of focus and via odd angles, it’s no spoiler to say that he’s played with slack jawed, dead eyed menace by Michael Eklund (The Divide, Fringe). His initial sweaty freakiness only ramps up as he gets more and more desperate to get away. The angles he’s shot at add to this unease, but with his vacant stare, he reminded me of a creepier Kiefer Sutherland.

When it comes to the end of the film, the director throws in some effective scares and retribution, (one moment of which made me laugh out loud in empathy with one character) and at the point in the film where the audience would expect a cut to the cavalry arriving with blankets being handed out to the traumatized, the film sets that up…. then goes somewhere else… It’s not a twist exactly but a slightly different take on the expected climax that will mean that The Call will stay with me longer than many cookie cutter cop thrillers. Don’t get me wrong, The Call is no Se7en or Silence of the Lambs but it does manage to succeed at what it sets out to do, and be entertaining with it.

The Call is in Malaysian cinemas from the 14th March and released in the US on the 15th .

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Categories: Movies, Reviews
Tags: 911, Abigail Breslin, Brad Anderson, Halle Berry, Michael Eklund, Morris Chestnut, Phone Booth, Se7en, Silence of the Lambs, The Call