Just going through a troubling divorce from her abusive husband, Mary Kee (Rachelle Lefevre – the original Victoria in the Twilight films) moves into a new apartment. Nice friendly gardening neighbours, a conversational French course to do at college, everything is rosy. Except the old rotary style phone that comes with the place keeps ringing, and on the other end is a woman, Rose (Lorna Raver) who keeps asking for some one who no longer lives there. In fact, they haven’t lived there since 1979. Which just happens to be when Rose is calling from. A blossoming relationship with a guy she meets at college, John (Stephen Moyer) pisses both Rose and her ex off.
With a not too original plot, The Caller succeeds in holding the attention with some neat little twists and turns, and the threat of Mary’s ex (Ed Quinn) never too far away, the tension soon mounts.
There’s a few plot holes, like how Rose can easily accept that she’s phoning someone in the future, and manage to find the same person she’s talking in her time. In all, it’s a bit of timey wimey that Doctor Who fans should easily understand.
The sound design is brilliant, and adds a few jumps to the ones you may expect, and despite being filmed in Puerto Rico, it looks very American. Apparently Brittany Murphy was originally going to be Mary, but left early into pre-production. Good news for the producers I guess. Odd bit of trivia : the director, Matthew Parkhill wrote an episode in season 4 of Primeval (the anomaly/dinosaur of the week show).
A passable way to spend 90mins, but not a classic.
6 out of 10.
