The Call (2013) * *

 

Directed by:  Brad Anderson

Starring:  Halle Berry, Abigail Breslin, Michael Eklund, Morris Chestnut, Michael Imperioli, David Otunga, Roma Maffia

If The Call remained a movie which depicted the daily grind of a 911 operator and how the stress can chip away at your soul, we might have had something special here.   But The Call doesn't have such lofty goals.  It is a thriller in which 911 operator Jordan Turner (Berry) becomes materially involved in not one, but two abductions of teenage girls by a twitchy creep with serious issues, such as building a shrine to his late sister which should have inspired at least some suspicion from his wife and kids.

Jordan responds to a 911 call in which a teenage girl is hiding in the house from an intruder.   The girl is eventually found and killed.   Jordan blames herself and loses her nerve to answer any more 911 calls.  Six months after the murder, Jordan is now a trainer of up-and-coming 911 operators.   A 911 comes in while Jordan is giving a tour of "the hive", the control center for 911 which looks like something you might see at NASA. I have no knowledge as to whether a 911 call center looks this pristine and sterile.  A teenager named Casey (Breslin) is kidnapped in a mall parking garage and thrown in the trunk.   Casey calls 911 with her friend's burner phone from the trunk and Jordan finds herself assisting the girl in hopes what happened six months prior won't happen again.

Because the GPS couldn't be tracked on the burner phone (again, I don't know if such a thing is possible or not), Jordan relies on her own cleverness and resourcefulness to assist Casey in knocking out the rear tail light, sticking her arm out to wave at other cars to attract attention, and even spill some paint from the trunk out of the car to create a makeshift trail.   This attracts another motorist (Imperioli), with deadly consequences.   

This is all at first suspenseful, but soon we are sucked into ludicrous plot developments in which Jordan conducts her own investigation and finds an underground lair (a la The Lovely Bones), in which the killer drags his victims.   The secret entrance is found with very little trouble by Jordan, and one has to wonder how the killer was able to construct such a place.   How did he move furniture down there?   I assume he didn't have help.   How long did it take him to build it?    Where did he find the time?  The mind doesn't just boggle, it melts down.   

Berry does as much with an underwritten character as she can.   I don't know how realistically The Call presents the daily goings-on in the life of a 911 operator, but for a while it works until it decides to switch course and morph into a gruesome, bloody slasher picture.   What happens to Casey and other victims is shown in gory detail.   Blood is everywhere.   This is one messy killer.   The Call begins well enough, but soon becomes drudgery in which the killer can't seem to die no matter how many times you hit him in the head with a heavy object or how far he falls down a ladder.   Maybe he's related to Michael Myers?