Review: The Call (2013)

March 15, 2013 Reviews 7 Comments

Cast: Halle Berry, Evie Thompson, Abigail Breslin
Director: Brad Anderson
Country: USA
Genre: Thriller
Official Trailer: Here

Editor’s Notes: The Call opens wide in cinemas today. For an additional perspective on the film, read Jason’s review. If you’ve already seen the film we’d love to hear your thoughts on it, or if you’re looking forward to seeing it this weekend, please tell us in the comments section below or in our new Next Projection Forums.

The Call (Anderson, 2013) is a thriller told in three distinctive acts. The acts are so distinctive that I thought there would be title cards announcing them. In Act I, Jordan (Halle Berry) is a 911 operator who is great at her job. She is shaken when she accidentally alerts a home intruder to the presence of his victim by calling her back. The girl is then found dead. Act II picks up six months later and Jordan is now a trainer in the 911 dispatch center. Apparently, she was too shaken to get back on the phones. While showing the trainees the screens during a live call, Jordan is forced to take over when the relatively new agent (she must have taken over for Jordan when she was moved to the training department, because she says she’s only been there six months). The call is from Casey (Abigail Breslin) who has been abducted and put in a trunk. She has her phone and Jordan talks her through getting signals out to other cars and clues for Jordan to relate to the police, one of whom is her boyfriend Paul (Morris Chestnut). They track the car, find it only to discover that the abductor has killed someone and taken his car. That man is Alan Danado (Michael Imperioli) who seems only to be in the film to get Michael Imperioli into it. Eventually, they get a print and can identify the abductor whose name is Michael Foster (Michael Eklund). They track him to a cottage he’s been renovating thanks to his wife. They find nothing and begin setting up checkpoints to make sure he can’t escape.

Act III is the most implausible and idiotic part of the film. Until Act III, The Call is a reasonably taught thriller despite its predictability and similarity to Cellular (Ellis, 2004).

Then Act III begins. Act III is the most implausible and idiotic part of the film. Until Act III, The Call is a reasonably taught thriller despite its predictability and similarity to Cellular (Ellis, 2004). Anderson manages to get us uncomfortably close to the victims with extreme close-ups. I’m not sure I understand why he puts us so close to the victims. I get that he wants us to be uncomfortable, but he achieves it in spades and makes it unsettling and distracting. Apart from that, the scenes between Casey and Jordan over the phone are captivating. Jordan is an expert at talking down her callers and she gets Casey to think straight and try to survive. There are many things Jordan has Casey do that helps her through the abduction. The reason they have to go through all this and can’t pinpoint her location? She’s on a pre-paid phone and it has no GPS.

Despite plot devices and conventions that seem straight from Syd Field’s screenwriting formula seminars, Anderson manages to ramp up the tension during the first 2/3s of the film. He ensures that we stay invested in the characters through the back-and-forth dialogue between Casey and Jordan. Berry is very convincing in her role and so is Breslin. They do their best and they do shine in the first two acts. Then Act III rears its ugly head.

In Act III, Jordan decides to unleash her inner Clarice Starling and investigate the case herself after being told by her supervisor to leave it to the police. She discovers that the abductor is the same one who killed the girl in Act I and now she feels personally responsible for Casey’s well-being. She drives out to the cabin the police have already turned over and found nothing. She looks around and finds a hatch to the basement of a burned-down house (we know this because Paul found an old picture in Michael’s home and his wife said it was his childhood home that burned down long ago). She drops her phone down the hatch when attempting to call the police and instead of recovering it and leaving to call Paul and have the police handle it like a good, responsible person would, she stays and decides to investigate. Standard tropes ensue wherein she is nearly discovered by Michael then rescues Casey at a crucial moment. This leads to a chase and to the silliest and most ridiculous ending I’ve seen since High Tension (Aja, 2003). It is so out of character for both Jordan and Casey, the only thing more unfathomable would have been if Jordan would have somehow been the killer all along a-la Donald Kaufmann’s script from Adaptation (Jonze, 2002).

Act III brings down the entire film due to its impossibly dumb turns. It stops being a thriller and begins going through the clichés of a bad horror film, like when Jordan goes down the ladder instead of leaving or when she’s hiding behind a dresser and discovers Michael’s real reason for abducting the girls he does (it really doesn’t matter what it is, because it’s so dumb and unexplored it is inconsequential) or when she sneaks up behind Michael and hits him to get Casey away.

Act III brings down the entire film due to its impossibly dumb turns. It stops being a thriller and begins going through the clichés of a bad horror film…

Jordan apparently feels compelled to handle this herself because she was told to leave it alone. She feels responsible but acts irresponsibly in an attempt to undo her mistake from six months prior. She seems to see nothing wrong with following up a lead herself, despite the fact that she is not an officer of the law and she is unarmed and untrained in the rescue of abduction victims. She seems to believe that because she feels responsible, that’s all she needs to find Casey and get her out alive.

Then comes the end. The damn, stupid, silly, unbelievable end. I don’t know how screenwriter Richard D’Ovido thought the end would make us feel. Perhaps he felt it would give the audience a feeling of retribution, the only kind vigilante justice can bring. That’s what Jordan becomes, a vigilante. In a film that prides itself on the system and the total rightness of what the first responders do, the end says “You know what? Forget all that. Take the law into your own hands and things will feel better.” D’Ovido and Anderson seem to think we want Michael to get what he does, but they’re wrong. It just doesn’t feel right. If this had been more like The Brave One (Jordan, 2007) and Jordan had been tracking Casey throughout most of the film, feeling the police would not help, the ending would have made more sense.

When I read the synopsis of the film, stating Jordan must confront a killer from her past, and when Jordan tells Paul of her police officer father, I thought we were going to get a film wherein she is confronted by say the man who killed her father while he was in the line of duty. Her father was a cop, she’s dating a cop…it felt like there would be some kind of lost childhood/absent father drama thrown into the thriller mix, but no. That would have added depth and shading to the film and that does not belong here. The film works so hard against itself and it ultimately undermines everything it builds. Anderson built his film on a bad foundation with cut-rate building materials and ended up with the whole thing falling apart when he was finished with it. With a different third act, the film could have been a decent, by-the-numbers thriller that would have been passible for popcorn entertainment. As it stands, we are left with characters and a film that is completely and totally unredeemable.

32/100 ~ AWFUL. Anderson built his film on a bad foundation with cut-rate building materials and ended up with the whole thing falling apart when he was finished with it.

By Doug Heller

I believe film occupies a rare place as art, entertainment, historical records and pure joy. I love all films, good and bad, from every time period with an affinity to Classical Hollywood in general, but samurai, sci-fi and noir specifically. My BA is in Film Studies from Pitt and my MA is in Education. My goal is to be able to ignite a love of film in others that is similar to my own.

http://twitter.com/Pete_Volk Pete Volk

Was afraid of this. Someone needs to rescue Halle Berry.
Doug Heller

I think she either needs a new agent or a new assistant who reads her scripts. She’s okay in the film, but she can be so much better.
http://www.facebook.com/people/Chris-D-Misch/28134555 Chris D. Misch

There’s a chance I’ll be seeing this tonight! A Good chance.
http://twitter.com/Bryan_C_Murray Bryan Murray

It seems every film she makes is mediocre and it’s a shame … Maybe the Bond Girl curse is real
http://www.facebook.com/people/Chris-D-Misch/28134555 Chris D. Misch

As implausible as that ending is, nothing will ever come close to the implausibility of High Tension.
Doug Heller

You’re right. I hated High Tension so much. Absolutely one of the worst films of the 2000′s.
http://www.facebook.com/people/Chris-D-Misch/28134555 Chris D. Misch

I actually didn’t mind the film up until those final moments. Some nasty stuff.