The Call
TriStar Pictures | Release Date: March 15, 2013 CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION
51
METASCORE
Mixed or average reviews based on 23 Critic Reviews
Positive:
5
Mixed:
14
Negative:
4
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Critic Reviews

Critic scorePublicationBy date
90
The New York TimesManohla DargisMar 14, 2013
An effectively creepy thriller about a 911 operator and a young miss in peril, The Call is a model of low-budget filmmaking. Read full review
75
Entertainment WeeklyStaff (Not credited)Mar 15, 2013
Surprisingly good, and surprisingly gruesome, fun. Read full review
75
San Francisco ChronicleMick LaSalleMar 14, 2013
The Call might not be a classic for the ages, but for a Friday night? For a movie to take people out of themselves? And to make them marvel at the viewing experience that just happened to them? This one is hard to beat. Read full review
70
The Hollywood ReporterTodd McCarthyMar 12, 2013
The Call for the most part is a tense, extreme-jeopardy thriller that delivers the intended goods. Read full review
67
Austin ChronicleLeah ChurnerMar 20, 2013
A pastiche of classic plot devices scrounged from "The Taking of Pelham One Two Three," "The Conversation," "Blue Velvet," and dozens of other movies, the story often feels familiar, but director Anderson (The Machinist) has a such a flair for suspense that even the most jaded viewers will find themselves in a sweat. Read full review
60
New York Daily NewsElizabeth WeitzmanMar 15, 2013
No one’s winning any awards for The Call. But at least the award winners know how to make it worth our while. Read full review
50
Chicago Sun-TimesIgnatiy VishnevetskyMar 18, 2013
A sputtering, so-so B thriller with a neat hook but very little personality. Read full review
50
The Globe and Mail (Toronto)Liam LaceyMar 14, 2013
For its last third, the entire thing gets a Frankensteinian head transplant, and turns into derivative serial-killer nonsense. Read full review
50
USA TodayClaudia PuigMar 14, 2013
The action starts with a bang, but deteriorates and grows more absurd as the story strays farther from the LAPD call center. Read full review
50
Philadelphia InquirerSteven ReaMar 14, 2013
The film is at once shamelessly transparent, manipulative, and far-fetched, and impossibly suspenseful. You'll want to take a shower afterward - that's how icky you'll feel. Read full review
50
Boston GlobeTy BurrMar 14, 2013
You’ve seen pieces of this movie in “Psycho,” “Silence of the Lambs,” and 2004’s “Cellular.” Still, the early scenes in the Hive give The Call a needed novelty: It’s a workplace drama, and the work is responding to other people’s desperate worst-case scenarios. Read full review
50
The A.V. ClubScott TobiasMar 14, 2013
All that unsavory business aside, the biggest problem with the third act is how the film discards the novelty of its own premise in order to bring its star into the action. When Berry trades her headset for a rock, it’s the bluntest metaphor imaginable for a film that’s completely lost its mind. Read full review
50
McClatchy-Tribune News ServiceRoger MooreMar 13, 2013
Rare is the thriller that goes as completely and utterly wrong as The Call does at almost precisely the one hour mark. Which is a crying shame, because for an hour, this is a riveting, by the book kidnapping. Read full review
50
VarietyAndrew BarkerMar 12, 2013
There’s little to differentiate this high-pitched screamer from a particularly feverish “Law and Order” rerun. Read full review
45
NPRIan BuckwalterMar 14, 2013
The shoddy attention to character, plausibility and detail is particularly surprising coming from Anderson, a director of smart indie thrillers like "The Machinist," "Session 9" and "Transsiberian." He's been a gifted filmmaker with a talent for creating chilling tension through meticulous control of just these elements. Read full review
40
Time Out LondonTrevor JohnstonSep 18, 2013
Yet just when the movie has us in its grasp, the script falls to pieces and turns into a crass female-in-peril button-pusher whose shameless psycho-killer clichés insult the intelligence. Read full review
40
Village VoiceChris PackhamMar 19, 2013
The middle third of the film comprises the phone call, a tight 40 minutes. Read full review
40
New Orleans Times-PicayuneMike ScottMar 15, 2013
For 91 minutes of its briskly paced 94-minute running time, the film works as a tightly wound bit of pins-and-needles storytelling. Then, Anderson lets it all unravel in a three-minute stretch of cheap writing that not only betrays the characters he worked so hard to develop, but that also thumbs its nose at any audience members with a brain. Read full review
40
Los Angeles TimesSheri LindenMar 14, 2013
It buzzes along for a while, the promising plot innovations inviting suspension of disbelief, before by-the-numbers implausibility, over-the-top valor and unsavory contrivances take over and the line goes dead. Read full review
38
ReelViewsJames BerardinelliMar 15, 2013
Labeling The Call as "relentlessly dumb" would be an overestimation of its intelligence. This is as brain-dead as a movie can be and it assumes the audience will have the I.Q. of a rutabaga. Read full review
38
New York PostSara StewartMar 14, 2013
I’ll say one thing for The Call: Its ending is actually a bit of a surprise. Just when you think it couldn’t get any stupider, pow! I’ll be damned, Hollywood, you still have the power to blindside. Read full review
38
Slant MagazineMar 14, 2013
Brad Anderson's film is defined by an often frustrating combination of cleverness and stupidity. Read full review
33
Film.comLaremy LegelMar 14, 2013
An active affront to logic, placing us in a world we firmly know doesn’t exist. Read full review
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