Review: The Call

New kid Chester Rushing falls in with Erin Sanders and her somewhat wild friends. One night they decide to take the new kid on one of their pranks. They visit the home of disgraced former daycare owner Edith Cranston (Lin Shaye) and her beloved husband Edward (Tobin Bell), and harass the poor old woman. She takes it poorly and commits suicide later that night. A few days later, the gang of wayward youths is called by Edward, who claims Edith wanted them to inherit some of her money (Um, OK…that sounds plausible). There’s a catch, however. To earn $100,000 each they must enter a room and receive a call supposedly from Edith herself. If they last more than a minute, the money is theirs. Sounds easy, right? Yeah, they think so too…

 

I get the feeling that I was supposed to be excited for a teaming of veteran character actors Tobin Bell and Lin Shaye in this 2020 horror pic from director Timothy Woodward Jr. (“The Outsider” with the bizarro teaming of country singer Trace Adkins and Danny Trejo) I guess it’s ‘coz Tobin Bell is the villain in the “Saw” franchise and Lin Shaye is a favourite of Aussie filmmakers James Wan and Leigh Whannell, the men behind that franchise and “Insidious”. To be honest, the only things I’ve liked Tobin Bell in all that much are “In the Line of Fire” and “Mississippi Burning”, neither of which were horror films nor large roles. As for Shaye, she’s fun in the “Insidious” films, but I generally think of her as New Line Cinema head Robert Shaye’s sister rather than her ‘Scream Queen’ status. So I wasn’t especially looking forward to this one, to be honest. The film has a little bit of the same revenge/game-playing stuff that I was exhausted with sometime after the second (and best) “Saw” film, but at least Bell seems genuinely invested here. His solid performance (the best I’ve ever seen from him) is the one and only thing I was invested in, however, whilst Shaye really doesn’t get much of a showcase here at all. She’s good when on screen, but most of her role is literally phoned in.

 

I suppose I enjoyed that the film lasted 45 of its 90 minutes without employing the tired ‘jump scare’ bullshit. However, that’s not enough to affect the score for me, as I’d much prefer a horror film with zero jump scares (though even my favourite horror film “The Omen” had one damn effective one). What I care about are story and character, and aside from Bell’s character I didn’t care about a damn thing here. It’s not an awful film, just massively clichéd, the characters fairly unlikeable and aside from Bell, uninteresting. I also didn’t find any of the young actors convincing in a 1980s setting. The kid with the Adam Ant makeup I’ll bet has never heard an Adam and the Ants song in his life. I was born in 1980 and even I’ve probably only heard three myself. I will say however, that Erin Sanders does have a bit of charisma to her. I wouldn’t mind seeing her in something else.

 

Scripted by Patrick Stibbs, it’s a tired mixture of “A Nightmare on Elm Street”, “Saw”, and countless others I could name. Most of them are a lot better than this one. Also, can we get a more original title? I’m pretty sure I’ve personally seen at least three films called “The Call”, and IMDb lists several more, not even including several short films with the same title.

 

Tobin Bell’s performance aside, this is a clichéd and tired affair. Its nondescript, unoriginal title reflects the quality of the film itself. Mediocre.

 

Rating: C-