'The Call' (2013) Movie Review: Surprises Within Conventionality

Into The World of 911 Calls

Halle Berry as lead Jordan Turner

I wasn’t expecting a masterpiece going into ‘The Call’ but I wasn’t disappointed as well. The movie starts off with a 911 call picked up by Jordan Turner (Halle Berry). The person reporting is having her home broken into.  Jordan’s instructions can be termed as conventional, pragmatic but she does sport some out-of-the-box thinking as well. She starts off with the basics. Go upstairs, lock your room. But afterwards she takes an exclusive
decision and asks the probably teenage girl to throw her slippers out the window and then hide under the bed. The criminal enters the room, peeps out of the window and assumes that she left seeing the slippers down below, so he decides to pursue her outside.  Jordan is on the phone with the girl (Leah Templeton) all this time but she gets disconnected. There are moments where we act on impulse, without rational judgment and unfortunately this was one moment for Jordan where she redials. The criminal (a man by the way) hears the phone ringing while he’s leaving and the rescued girl becomes a hopeless victim.

Jordan is obviously devastated and notes must be made to the movies use of cameras and sounds. She experiences violent nightmares emblazoned with a night shade effect to generate a delirious influence. As she tries to return to her job the voices of past and present 911 calls echo inside her head, presenting the chaotic state her mind is in. It’s too much for her to handle and 6 months later, she’s teaching trainees instead of doing her job. At this point, the scene changes to two girls in a shopping mall, one girl being Abigail Breslin’s Casey Welson. It doesn’t take long to realize that Breslin is the next victim of the initial criminal, given her high profile acting career. Here, camera angles are taken from just around corners or from narrow door openings to give the stalker’s/kidnapper’s point of view.  My point is that the movie relies on textbook methods of building mystery and suspense, even deciding not to reveal the kidnapper’s face up until it becomes too problematic with the amount of action. Fate also ensures that somehow Jordan takes over the 911 call from this girl, who happens to be kidnapped by the same felon that killed Leah Templeton. Jordan gets her shot at redemption while Breslin is being taken in the boot of a car.

Despite the use of traditional camera work, the film does dispense tension and thrills until it peaks at the very middle. How often does a kidnapping and potential murder involve trails of white paint along roads, two people in the hood of a car when only one was supposed to be kidnapped, and a man set on fire? The movie should keep your locked in with ease.

Besides the rather surprising events described above, it’s the lead performances by Berry and Breslin that keep the movie afloat. Teenage girls tend to lose their minds if they see a pimple break out on their forehead or if they see a cockroach in the bedroom, so her initial hysteria at being kidnapped is portrayed accurately, you may say. Berry then decides to act as the voice of reason from the 911 call center and their conversation takes the spotlight. It deserves the center stage as the acting is impeccable, faultless and Berry’s attempts to get Breslin rescued from the boot of a car are truly creative, if not practical for those familiar with the genre. This is like an episode of Man vs. Wild with Bear Grylls stuck in the back of a car. My only issue with the movie is that for a 911 call that lasts for more than 30 minutes, the USA’s tech services failed to extract a GPS location.

Critics and the audience in general ridicule the finale, especially when it came to the motives of the kidnapper. If you are a kidnapper whose penchant is for teenage girls, I doubt that you’ll have an elaborate agenda like some movie villains. You are bound to be a freak in dire need of mental health care. You won’t have a plan unlike some of film’s greatest antagonists. You categorically won’t be a Bane or a Ra’s al Ghul. It’s silly for the audience or critics to expect a devious or a nefarious reason for the kidnapping, even though it would have elevated the movie’s story significantly. Even the ending was criticized and panned. Unlike the camera procedures used, the ending deviated from the mundane Cinderella ending of a police rescue and that choice should be applauded. People don’t want the same material delivered incessantly. It becomes stale and unpalatable.

If we mute the unreasonable expectations of critics and movie-goers alike, what you have here is an above par picture that should provide plenty of twists and turns. The kidnapper’s depiction by Michael Eklund makes your blood curdle and you want to keep watching so as to ensure that he meets a fate as grim as that he imposes on his victims. You must watch this.