User Reviews

The first hour was decent - a 911 operator on a call with a kidnapped teen. While artistic license was taken here too, I was able enjoy the movie. But, while I'm pretty good at suspending disbelief, I just couldn't get over the police storming into the empty house and then leaving. It had a "taking my ball and going home" feel to me. I would expect another team to come in and start scouring the home looking for evidence or clues to find the teen, or at least learn more about the abductor. But no - everyone just up and left leaving it open for Jordan to go back and investigate on her own.

The ending was also pretty stupid. First, if Jordan so easily found the trap door, it's pretty likely someone else will find it (since the police know the location, they should be back....or maybe not.) Also, the other victims could potentially never be found. Jordan was in a bad spot earlier with a bad decision. Really bad ending.

It really seems like two different people wrote this movie.

The Call was an interesting watch. I don't think I've ever seen a movie build up so much tension in the first couple acts and just spiral out of control so badly in the final act. Did anyone like the end of this movie? I don't know, I tried to wrap my head around it but I just can't. Anyway The Call is about a 911 operator Jordan played by Halle Berry who gets a call from a girl who has been kidnapped by a serial killer. Turns out this is the same killer that Jordan had dealt with a few months earlier who ended up killing the girl she was on the phone with. Jordan took responsibility for her death because she inadvertently got the girl caught by calling her back on the landline which allowed the killer to hear the phone ring and ultimately find her. Since then Jordan stepped away from being an operator and took on teaching until the day the call came in about the same guy with the same MO and Jordan is the only one who can talk the girl through this delicate situation.

I love the premise of this movie - it's heavy on the dialogue but it doesn't go overboard with the drama. Everything is down-to-earth and realistic for the most part. It feels like you're genuinely watching a 911 operator help someone through a kidnapping and this is largely due to the acting by both Berry and Abigail Breslin who plays the girl in the trunk. The first couple of acts are fairly slow on action, but there are plenty of nail-biting scenes and overall tension building that keeps your eyes glued to the screen. Now, the third act kicks things into overdrive in every possible way. I won't spoil anything if you haven't seen it, but it essentially goes from Halle Berry the psychologically unstable 911 operator to Halle Berry the idiotic superhero. She starts doing things that are horribly out of character and it lessens the believability to the point where the tension falls flat. It was still fun to watch and I don't think it ruined the movie by any means, it just dampened what could've been a really effective down-to-earth thriller.

The antagonist of this movie is a mixed bag. The actor Michael Eklund is great in the role. He has played creepers before, namely the Dollmaker in Arrow which I thought he was fantastic in. Here he's your standard psychopath, or at least he starts out that way. As the movie progresses you find more things about this guy and his motive becomes really confusing. We discover that he has a shrine to his sister who died of cancer in his room, and there are pictures of what looks like an incestuous relationship between he and his sister before she died, and then it turns out he's a hair fetishist who scalps his victims while they're alive to preserve their hair and puts it on a mannequin head, presumably to keep the memory of his sister alive. All of his victims are blonde girls like his sister was so that's the only reasonable motive I can think of, but they explain it so poorly and throw all these weird character traits at the guy that it just gets confusing and weird. I'm sure the filmmakers just wanted to make him as creepy as possible so yeah I guess it worked.

Again, I really enjoyed The Call and was invested throughout, despite the drastic tone change in the final act. Seriously I have no idea what the writers were thinking with the ending but wow. There are many things you can pick apart about this movie but I rate things on how much I enjoyed them and I thoroughly enjoyed The Call. I'm not sure I'd ever watch it again, but it was gripping in the moment and I recommend it to any fan of serial killer movies or psychological thrillers.

This movie plot build up with so much tension and excitement but ended like a B greaded movie.

The skilled 911 operator Jordan Turner (Halle Berry) receives a phone call from the teenager Leah Templeton (Evie Louise Thompson) reporting a burglary at home. Jordan instructs Leah to hide herself in a room, but Jordan commits a mistake with tragic consequences, affecting her career.

Six months later, Jordan is a trainer of rookies in the 911 service haunted by her past. While showing the operation to the group, a new operator faces the call from the teenager Casey Welson (Abigail Breslin) that tells that she has been abducted. The operator panics and Jordan assumes the call, trying to calm down Casey and to get information to identify where she is and who kidnapped her. Now Jordan faces the chance of redemption and gives her best efforts to help Casey. Will she succeeds in her intent?

"The Call" is a thriller with a breathtaking first half that makes the movie worth watching. It is amazing how tense I was with the realistic despair of Casey in the trunk of the car, a type of crime not difficult to happen in Brazil. Unfortunately the writer Richard D'Ovidio does not resist to the Hollywood clichés and destroys the believable story that could have been a great thriller. Who in the world would investigate a dangerous murderer without a weapon or telling at least to her boyfriend that is a police officer the findings in the crime scene before exploring the location? Further, wouldn't be much easier to use the mall cameras to identify the red car? My vote is seven.

Title (Brazil): "Chamado de Emergência" ("Emergency Call")

This started out as a generic story well-told by a solid cast. Halle Berry and Abigail Breslin had great chemistry over the phone, their dynamic backed up by a lot of solid supporting actors and even having me tear up a bit as the two of them bond in the crucible of Breslin's ordeal. The movie's runtime didn't leave much room for establishing character, but that's okay, sometimes its better to focus on the story. But then I get to the end, and the suspension bridge of disbelief suddenly snaps out from underneath me as the movie takes me waaaaay offroad. To sum up the ending: Halle Berry drops her phone down a hole leading to the serial killer's secret lair when she goes to call 911, so she climbs down to grab it leading to a short game of cat and mouse that ends with her pulling Breslin out just in the nick of time. All very familiar territory so far (even if I was screaming at the screen for her just to climb back up the ladder and finish calling for help to the nearby cops) but then after facing the bad guy and saving the girl in the big scary climax, the two of them team up to turn what was a heartfelt and poignant connection into a twisted revenge fantasy. Breslin, who to that point had been well-acting the part of a typical teenage girl, suddenly goes rogue and stops the dedicated 911 operator from dialing 911 so that the two of them can GO BACK DOWN THE HOLE and trap the bad guy in his own lair truss him up to die. ...huh? This 'twist' (if you can call it that) was so unexpected, unwarranted, and abrupt that it was like walking face-first into a sliding glass door that you thought was open, like they turfed the original ending and brought in the writer of Saw to shake things up a bit. Lets talk about consequences here. The ADULT and supposed professional Berry, who had up to that point been nothing but a decent human being, helps the TEENAGE Breslin commit murder. An act the poor girl will have to live with the rest of her life, setting aside the trauma of being abducted and nearly scalped in the first place. But worse than that, they told the world that the SERIAL KILLER had simply disappeared. Which would mean no closure for the families of his other victims, many of whom were likely unidentified as there were a lot of scalps in that mini-fridge. AND EVEN WORSE THAN THAT! The ending we are left with shows the empathetic 911 operator, whose very job requires her to deal with people on a daily basis who are terrified for their lives, happily willing to leave a whole city of people to live in constant fear of a dead man. All so that the writers could find a way to throw a lame pithy line back in the bad guy's face. Sigh. 3 Stars. Would have been 8, but for the truly terrible ending.

The Call centers around a 911 Operational Center based in Los Angeles, CA. The producers administer a realistic setting in dealing with the position of being a 911 Dispatcher. Each day they handle a wide variety of incoming calls, and this movie depicts the importance of how they relay pertinent information to emergency services. In most crisis situations the 911 Operators are the initial contact and their decision making could make the difference in someone's well being.

At the beginning of the movie we hear a wide variety of incoming calls dealing with different situations. The operators are gathering information and coding the call with a color coded system, based on the severity of the situation. We hear a frequent caller who routinely gets intoxicated, lonely, and calls for advice.

Halle Berry plays an experienced 911 Operator who has an understanding of Law Enforcement as her father was a Retired Police Officer and her boyfriend is with LAPD.

She receives a 911 call from a victim regarding a break in. She provides the victim with good advice, and she relays the necessary information to the authorities. But, she lets her emotions get the best of her, as she makes a costly mistake.

Berry decides she needs a change, and takes a position within the operational center as a trainer. When a new recruit receives a call regarding an abduction in progress, Berry knows because of her experience she has to handle the situation.

Again, she gives the victim great advice, but to a degree the Police do a somewhat shoddy job in an attempt to locate an abduction in progress. LAPD is a big agency, yet they didn't seem like they allocated their resources too well.

The way in which they identified the suspect was somewhat disbelieving. The technology(fingerprint comparison) which was used was accurate, but it took the Police too long to find the physical evidence, and the suspect seemed smart enough not to leave behind a clue of that nature.

Now, this is where I disagree with the direction of this movie. Berry is very competent as a 911 Operator. I think the matter should have been resolved through the 911 Center. Berry could have maintained communication with the victim, and she could have utilized different clues that actually provided a location. Then she could have informed LAPD of her findings and have them locate the victim and arrest the suspect.

Instead, Berry's character decides to take matters in her own hands and use investigative skills to provide a valiant accomplishment.

I think this is where the movie started to go downhill, and the director lost sight of the concept of the movie.

The ending - Based on how Berry's character left her element I honestly expected some sort of vigilante justice. The problem with the ending is the way the crime scene was displayed, there were other victims that could have been identified, not too mention the amount of manpower LAPD would allocate looking for a serial killer in which the victims knew his whereabouts.

I really enjoyed this thriller! It has tension and drama, a good plot and a decent cast. I can't help but wonder what the hell the makers of this movie were thinking when they tacked on the ending! It made no sense and felt completely out of character, It simply didn't need it and is one of the most blatent attempts to score points with a twist I have ever seen! Thankfully it didn't ruin the movie, but it certainly took the gloss off an otherwise fine thriller.

Emergency 911 operators may cringe at Halle Berry's conduct in the contrived but harrowing serial killer crime thriller "The Call." "The Machinist" director Brad Anderson and "Exit Wounds" scenarist Richard D'Ovidio manage to generate considerable white-knuckled tension and suspense during the first two thirds of this exciting but familiar R-rated epic. A homicidal psycho abducts a helpless teenage girl from a Los Angeles mall, locks her in the trunk of a stolen car, and determines to elude the authorities. Although she manages to alert 911 about her predicament, the poor girl in the trunk is talking on a disposable cell phone. Meaning, the 911 system cannot establish her whereabouts since they can trace the phone. Despite their impressive equipment on the ground and in the air, neither the 911 call center nor the Los Angeles Police have any luck rescuing the damsel-in-distress. Most contemporary films, particularly action-oriented procedurals, shun realism for the dramatic impact of 'what-if' make-believe. Flaunting realism from the start, "The Call" (**1/2 OUT OF ****) exploits the physical situation for everything it's worth. Initially, the ups and downs of the victim contending with a psychotic maniac who has no qualms about murder make this movie gripping stuff. Unfortunately, Anderson and D'Ovidio have nowhere to go after the chase ends. The remainder of "The Call" degenerates into an utterly improbable potboiler like the Amanda Seyfried movie "Gone." Our heroine violates every rule she has taught her 911 trainees. Not only does she break her own rules, but also she ignores her superior's orders. During those final 20 minutes up leading up to a twist ending, the heroine behaves like a stereotypical, imperiled dame. She does the kind of idiotic things that a victim would do in a standard-issue serial killer thriller.

Jordan Turner (Oscar winning Halle Berry of "Monster's Ball") is a seasoned 911 operator. She responds to a call early on involving a home invasion. Jordan converses with a young girl alone in the house while she dispatches a police cruiser. The desperate girl takes refuge under an upstairs bed like the heroine in "Taken" while the intruder prowls the premises. Satisfied nobody is home, the intruder prepares to depart. Jordan loses her connection with the girl and calls her back. The ring tone of the cell phone alerts the intruder, and he finds the girl. He speaks to our heroine and assures her that the girl is as good as dead. Later, the police find the body of the unfortunate girl, and it isn't a pretty sight. Jordan suffers from nightmares about the incident, and her boyfriend, LA.P.D. Officer Paul Phillips (Morris Chestnut of "Half-Past Dead"), can do nothing to relieve her anxiety. Jordan remembers the killer's icy voice with chilling familiarity. Six months after this tragic incident, Jordan is showing rookies how to deal with all kinds of emergency callers. Predictably, Jordan finds herself drawn back into the fray when a green 911 operator cannot handle a call from a frenzied girl.

Anderson and company set up the initial situation well enough. Jordan sought to intervene on behalf of the first girl, but she had no way to do it. Indeed, she feels guilty about ringing the teen back because the invader found her as a result of the cell phone ringing. Eventually, after she recognizes the voice of the killer during the second incident, she refuses to go home and relax. Imagine the ordeal of Casey Welson (Abigail Breslin of "Zombieland") when she is kidnapped in broad daylight from a popular shopping mall and thrown in the trunk of a car. No sooner does she wind up confined in the boot of the vehicle than she finds a disposable cell phone that her girlfriend accidentally left behind at the mall. Casey contacts 911, and she goes crazy on the phone until Jordan calms her down. Before long she has Casey smash out a tail light and pour paint out of the hole. Jordan alerts L.A.P.D. authorities in a helicopter with the make and model of the vehicle that the serial killer is driving. These constitute some of the most excruciating moments in "The Call." Another concerned but misguided motorist intervenes on Casey's behalf, but he has no success. The L.A.P.D. block off the area where they believe the serial killer is working, but they find nothing. Back at the 911 call center, Jordan listens to her conversation with the psycho and decides to investigate on her own like Nancy Drew. At this point, "The Call" takes a preposterous turn. Nevertheless, despite a bad hairdo, Hale Berry delivers a hypnotic performance as the conscience-stricken 911 operator, while Abigail Breslin holds her on in the trunk. As the enigmatic villain, actor Michael Eklund dominates the action when he is front and center. "The Call" ends up being the kind of movie where audiences talk back to the screen as if they can warn the heroine about her reckless behavior. Indeed, she makes the mistake that all serial killer heroines make when she believes several firm raps on the back of the head will keep the villain down for the count. Altogether, "The Call" qualifies as an above-average thriller, even when our well-meaning heroine gets in over her head. The filmmakers compensate for the Nancy Drew interlude with an abrupt surprise ending that will make you applaud the actions of our heroines.

It was ok until the 911 operator went off the rails instead of calling the real police to follow up her suspicions. Ridiculous ending. Typical Hollywierd BS.

Surprising this movie isn't as horrible as the other WWE Studio produced movies. The movie took itself very serious and there wasn't any bad acting throughout the film, in my opinion. With a limited budget, they did a hell of a great job making it a decent suspense. Yes, it was originally conceptualized as a television series called 'the Hive', but they really made the right choice here, because television is over plethora with cop/ serial killer dramas. Astounding, there is a few movies about the 911 operators. It's nice to see a dispatcher's perspective, although I highly doubt any one in their right mind would play detective. They change the title to the 'The Call' which makes more sense than 'the Hive' anyways. The Call is about Jordan Turner (Halle Berry) who is an LAPD 911 operator who receives a call from Casey Welson (Abigail Breslin) teenager girl who just got kidnapped by a serial killer play by Micheal Eklund. Michael Eklund was very interesting in the role, as he can both creepy and look like a normal guy on the street. Still, the movie's characters tell us, the audience that he is smart murderer, but instead we see Michael Eklund fumble throughout the film. Honestly, what kind of serial killer doesn't check or make sure, that the victim does or doesn't have a cell phone? In my opinion, that would be the number 1 thing to do with your victim. To check if there was anything that can lead the police to you. Not only the killer act dumb, but the police can be a bit stupid as well. While Office Paul Phillips (Morris Chestnut) was brilliantly play and WWE wrestler David Ortunga was OK in his small part as his partner. The biggest insult is how the police didn't keep a patrol car or policeman station in one of the killer's known hideouts, nor do they check the place correcting. I was kinda disappointed by the small part Michael Imperioli play in the film, as I felt that he would have work better in a bigger role. I would have like to see him in the David Ortunga's role. Michael did his part in the film, but it felt like a wasted role for an actor as good as him. Halle Berry was great in the role, as I can see how this stressful and demanding job took a toll on her. I like how driven she was to correct her past mistake with the murderer. Abigail did a great job on the film. I'm was a bit flabbergasted to see her in this film. I didn't realize until later, that she was the same actress in Little Miss Sunshine. Wow, she has gotten older since then. The movie was a great thriller and some bits of it can be really scary or creepy. The ending was a bit of a disappointing, as it lack the impact as the rest of the film. I will call it from here. It was OK. So check it out if you want to.