Released: March 2013
Director: Brad Anderson
Run Time: 95 Minutes
Rated R
Distributor: Sony Pictures/Tri-Star Entertainment
Genre: Thriller
Cast:
Halle Berry: Jordan Turner
Abigail Breslin: Casey Welson
Morris Chestnut: Officer Paul Phillips
David Otunga: Officer Jake Devans
Michael Eklund: Michael Foster
Your average kidnap thriller is pretty straightforward as you can get. They should be. An effective kidnap thriller can’t deviate from the main plot point, so any extraneous twists and red herrings are thrown out the window for a more simplified and intense experience. The length of a kidnap thriller will ultimately depend on what the filmmakers want to do with it. Do they want to do what Denis Villeneuve did with Prisoners and opt for a more slow-burn experience that really gets under the skin of the audience? Or do they want to hit the ground running like Taken? Neither approach is particularly wrong, it ultimately depends on what you, the audience, wants to experience. If you’re more akin to something that lasts maybe an hour and a half, then something like Prisoners may not be your cup of tea. However, if you want something that’s a bit more cerebral than Liam Neeson beating down human traffickers, than maybe Prisoners is more your style. So, where does The Call reside? This one is strictly for the roller-coaster, thrill-ride crowd. But is it any good?
The film opens on a Los Angeles-based 9-1-1 operating center that most people call “The Hive.” This center has well over a dozen people fielding emergency calls ranging from bats flying around in a house to murders. One operator, Jordan Turner, gets a call from a young girl saying that her house was broken into by crazed person. While Jordan tells the girl to hide, the phone gets disconnected. When she calls back, the ringing phone alerts the intruder to the girl’s presence and the girl ends up being kidnapped and murdered. Because of this mistake, Jordan decides to step away from the phones and teach new people how the whole thing works. Meanwhile, another young girl, Casey, is abducted from a mall and tossed into the trunk of a car. When Casey calls 9-1-1, Jordan takes over from an inexperienced rookie and tries to work with Casey so they can find her before it’s too late. It’s not very often that we actually get to see what goes on behind the scenes at an emergency response center. It actually lends a degree of authenticity to what could have been a fairly generic plot. For the first two-thirds of the film, the story is simple, yet fairly compelling in how it’s shown to the audience. I say the first two-thirds of the film, because the last third of the film basically comes from a completely different kind of film and it just doesn’t really fit in with what’s been taking place so far. Aside from the final act, which I will address a little later in this post(I won’t spoil it for you), it’s a surprisingly effective little thriller.
In order for a thriller like this to work, you need to have actors and performances that can really sell the tension and desperation. Thankfully, The Call has a pretty strong cast here. Michael Eklund plays the kidnapper and definitely gives the character a really creepy and unsettling vibe. Morris Chestnut plays Officer Paul Phillips, Jordan’s boyfriend, and he does a pretty decent job here. The real stars of the show here are Halle Berry and Abigail Breslin. I’ve never been a huge fan of Halle’s, but she turns in a very powerful performance here as Jordan Turner, silly hairdo notwithstanding. From the moment she is talking to the first victim, we can definitely get a sense of dread and desperation from her voice and when things go horribly wrong, she loses it. Abigail, initially turns in a performance of a typical teenage girl, but when she’s thrown into a trunk, she gives an incredibly gut-wrenching performance as a girl that is truly afraid that she might get killed. She definitely sells it. The back-and-forth between Jordan and Casey is one of the big highlights of the film, with Jordan trying to calm Casey and get her to start helping herself by trying to bring attention to the car that she’s trapped in. Honestly, if it wasn’t for Halle Berry and Abigail Breslin’s performances, I don’t think this film would have registered on anybody’s radar. The marketing certainly didn’t do the film any favors.
I absolutely dig the cinematography and production designs here. While the set of the response office was built from scratch, it’s apparently based on one the actual centers in Los Angeles. It’s really interesting seeing how these people actually work. I’ve always wondered what it’s like on the other side of that phone call. But a lot of the film generally takes place between two locations: Jordan’s response center and the trunk that Casey is trapped in. The camera-work here is very interesting, because the trunk is a very cramped place so the camera is essentially right up in Abigail’s face. It gives you a sense of claustrophobia that’s incredibly palpable.
In case you haven’t noticed, I really dig this movie. There’s a lot to like here. It’s a kidnap thriller, so the time-crunch really helps give the film that sense of urgency that is required for films like this. When the film works, it’s one of the most intense movies I’ve ever seen. When it doesn’t, it really doesn’t. Honestly, the only time that I think the film doesn’t really work is in the final act. When it comes to ending thrillers like this, you need to have an ending that is not only satisfying, but also logical. Up until this point, The Call has been a fairly realistic and intense thriller that I could easily recommend to anybody who has a passing interest in the genre. However: The final act of the film takes an unfortunate turn into serial-killer horror film territory. With everything that Halle’s character was doing in the film up to this point, having Jordan try to solve the crime herself really stretches the film’s credibility. I get that they were trying to go for something empowering. That would’ve been fine…..in a different film. That’s because the final act of the film feels like it belongs in a completely different movie. It damn near ruins all the good will that The Call was trying to build. It feels like the filmmakers wrote themselves into a corner that they didn’t know how to get out of. Does it really wreck the rest of the film? For a lot of people it has. For me, I kind of went with it and I still managed to enjoy the whole thing, but it is a stark contrast to the rest of the film and brings the score down quite a bit.
So, would I still recommend The Call despite the film’s ending? Honestly, yeah. This is pretty good for a rental or buying on the cheap. I picked it up for less than 7 bucks, so it wasn’t a bad deal.
My Final Recommendation: Don’t crank call 9-1-1. They’ve got a lot of stuff going on. 7/10.