Aunque tiene 2 años que fue lanzada en Puerto Rico y Reino Unido, realmente llego a México el 22 febrero 2013, por lo anterior estamos ante un estreno.

Vaya sorpresa con esta película, honestamente no esperaba nada, mi único interés era conocer una coproducción de Puerto Rico, la historia es al menos interesante y créanme que es más entretenida que otras de manufactura estadounidense.

Desgraciadamente le sobran unos 60 minutos, la historia empieza a caer conforme conocemos a los personajes y, aunque la excelente actuación de Lefevre nos mantendrá hasta el final, digamos que esta cinta funcionaba mejor como cortometraje.

El mayor error es tener una serie de clichés que le restan relevancia a la propuesta, además de terminar la historia de manera obvia pero dejando muchos cabos sueltos, quizás es mi mayor molestia, no resuelve lo que plantea.

Mejor rentala en DVD.

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Detalles

Director: Matthew Parkhill.

Actores: Rachelle Lefevre, Stephen Moyer, Lorna Raver, Ed Quinn, Luis Guzmán, Lydia Echevarria, Aris Mejias, Gladys Rodríguez, Sunshine Logroño, Brian Tester, Grace Connelly, Alfredo De Quesada, Marisé Alvarez, Leonardo Castro, Jose Cotte.

Duración: 92 minutos.

Clasificación: B.

Sinopsis: La cinta sigue a Mary Kee, una mujer recién divorciada a la que le comienzan a suceder cosas muy extrañas depués de encontrar un viejo teléfono en su apartamento. Ésta comienza a recibir misteiosas llamadas telefónicas de un desconocido, que consiguen incomodarla hasta el punto de sentirse perseguida y vigilada en su propia casa. El profesor Guidi, amigo de Mary, tratará de ayudarla a conocer la procedencia de tan misteriosas llamadas. Pero cuando Mary descubre que esta terrorífica comunicación viene del pasado, trata de romper contacto. Sólo hay un problema, la persona que llama no le gusta ser ignorado y planea vengarse de una manera única y aterradora.

Trailer: http://youtu.be/hcPeAx3pY-4

DirecTV

Full Circle, from screenwriter Neil LaBute in his television debut, examines the human condition and relationships through a series of conversations between 11 people whose lives are unknowingly intertwined.

The ten-part series will be exective produced by Nick Hamm for Momentum TV, part of Momentum Entertainment Group. LaBute will write and co-executive produce.

Full Circle, which will be distributed by FremantleMedia International, enters production in early summer and will broadcast on DirecTV’s Audience channel this fall.

DirecTV’s first original drama was Rogue, which debuted earlier this month on Audience.

Starring Thandie Newton, it tells the story of a morally and emotionally-conflicted undercover detective who is tormented by the possibility that her own actions contributed to her son’s death.

It is executive produced by Nick Hamm for Greenroom Entertainment, John Morayniss and Michael Rosenberg for Entertainment One and Steven Marrs from Momentum Entertainment Group. Entertainment One is handling international distribution.

Series creator Matthew Parkhill is a writer and supervising producer.

Rogue

Source: DirecTV

“It was conceived in Vancouver, ironically, because I was in Vancouver at the time,” Parkhill recalled recently.

Eventually he settled on Oakland, Calif., for his setting, but that was more for American TV audiences than anything else. His crime story could have been set in any generic port city on the North American coast.

As luck would have it, Rogue turned out to be filmed in Vancouver, anyway. Filming took place in Vancouver’s Lower Mainland late last year, with the city filling in for the U.S. West Coast.

Rogue features London-born, BAFTA-winning actor Thandie Newton as undercover officer Grace Travis and New Zealand native Marton Csokas as equally conflicted crime boss Jimmy Laszlo.

Thandie Newton

The supporting ensemble includes U.K. actors Joshua Sasse, Matthew Beard and Ian Hart, along with Montreal native Claudia Ferri, Calgary-based actors Jarod Joseph and Kavan Smith, Victoria native Leah Gibson and Vancouver’s Ian Tracey in Rogue’s gallery of police detectives, gangsters, criminal operatives and small-time hangers-on.

Rogue debuts Wednesday on The Movie Network and Movie Central, and on DirecTV’s Audience Channel in the U.S. It will run for 10 episodes in all, with a second season already on the drawing board, depending on ratings and the audience’s reaction.

“I’ve been a huge fan of American television for years, ever since Six Feet Under and The Sopranos,” Parkhill explained. “So to start a journey in London and end up making an American show in Vancouver, and have 10 hours to tell the story, is an incredible journey in itself. Thinking about it now, it’s fitting that it ended up being an American show with Brits and Irish and Canadians.”

Parkhill, a Cambridge University history major and the writer-director of BBC1’s award-winning romantic comedy Sons, Daughters & Lovers, conceived Rogue together with fellow Brit, Killing Bono filmmaker Nick Hamm. Parkhill created the series, and wrote the first, middle and last episodes; Hamm directed the season finale, and did double duty as the series’ co-executive producer.

Marton Csokas, left, and Thandie Newton

Hamm believes Rogue will stand on its own, without appearing to be derivative or similar to anything that’s come before.

“We wanted to represent our crime family in a very modern way,” he said. “It’s not a show about people wearing track suits and eating meatballs in the backs of cafes.”

The title Rogue has a double meaning: It refers both to Csokas’ character, a crime boss unwilling to play by the accepted rules of society, and to Newton’s character, a career-driven professional tempted to “go rogue” the closer she gets to the root of evil.

“We start the story when she’s undercover at the very beginning and there are clear demarcations between her life at work and when she’s at home,” Newton said. “That all changes when her son dies. She goes back undercover to discover what happened to her boy, and the lines become blurred.”

Rogue

Newton said she was attracted by the idea of playing a character pretending to be someone else — at first. That changed, over time.

“What’s interesting to me, actually, about the character, is that she loses who she is,” Newton said. “She’s on a journey of discovery about who she’s become and who she is now, having lost a child. The idea of playing a role within a role — yeah, that was fun at first, but it didn’t last long.”

Rogue may tell a serialized story, but the first season will have a definitive ending, Parkhill promised.

“The audience is not going to be left hanging,” he said. “The model is that, each season, there will be a new serialized thriller storyline which will have its own beginning, middle and end, spread out over 10 hours.

“The first season operates fundamentally as a whodunit. And by the end of the first season, you will find out who did it.”

Rogue premieres Wednesday on The Movie Network at 9 ET and Movie Central at 9 MT/8 PT.

Vancouvers actors Ian Tracey, Jonathan Holmes, Sarah Jeffery and Jarod Joseph are also in the cast alongside Newton, who stars as Grace, a morally and emotionally-conflicted undercover detective who is tormented by guilt over her son’s death.

The cop’s search for the truth is further complicated by her forbidden relationship with the crime boss (Csokas) who may have played a hand in the crime.　

The series is a Canada-U.K. co-production by Entertainment One and Greenroom Entertainment, produced in participation with DIRECTV. Rogue will air on Movie Central in B.C.　

Series creator Matthew Parkhill (The Caller) serves as writer and supervising producer. In addition to Newton and Csokas, the cast includes Ian Hart and Martin Donovan.　Brian Kirk (Game of Thrones, Boardwalk Empire) directs the first episode.

In THE CALLER (2011), a recently divorced woman is terrorized by strange phone calls. No, it’s not a telemarketer on the line. It’s a crazed woman who’s somehow calling from a different decade.

Upon the heels of a messy divorce, Mary Kee (Rachelle Lefevre) moves into a new apartment where she receives a phone call from a woman asking to speak to a man who supposedly lives there. Mary assumes it’s the wrong number, but when the woman, who says her name is Rose, identifies the number and the address of the apartment, Mary tells her that obviously the guy has moved out. The woman insists however that she’s right, that she just saw the man there that very day. At this point, Mary figures the woman is crazy and hangs up.

But the woman continues to call. For a while, Mary is sympathetic towards her, as Rose is sad and depressed, because the man she claims lives in the apartment had promised to marry her. But when she says she’s living in 1979, Mary again figures the woman has flipped her lid.

But then strange things begin to happen. Things Rose does in the past begin to affect things in the present, and it reaches the point where Mary can’t ignore the possibility that something bizarre is going on. She turns to her boyfriend John (Stephen Moyer) for help, and he thinks it might be her creepy ex-husband Steven (Ed Quinn) playing tricks on her, and Steven is creepy, and then some. He’s a big-time jerk and a creep who regularly ignores the restraining order against him and taunts and threatens Mary at his leisure.

Sure, it could be Steven, but when Rose goes “psycho” on Mary and threatens Mary’s friends, carrying out these threats in 1979, it changes Mary’s present. Mary realizes Rose and her threats are the real deal and suddenly she finds herself fighting for her life.

Yep, it’s SINGLE WHITE FEMALE (1992) meets THE TIME MACHINE (1960), and sadly, it sounds much better than it actually is, because in reality, THE CALLER isn’t a very good movie.

I had trouble with THE CALLER from the get-go. Its initial image is that of a big, black rotary phone, which in itself is a good thing because it immediately brought to mind Alfred Hitchcock’s DIAL M FOR MURDER (1954). When the movie opens and Mary has an old-fashioned rotary phone in her apartment, I’m thinking, this is a period piece, but it’s not. It takes place in the present. I found this strange, and I couldn’t get past the fact that in this story, Mary hardly uses her cell phone, which raises several interesting questions.

For example, when things start to go wrong with Rose, why doesn’t Mary just disconnect her phone? She has a cell phone! Use it! Why doesn’t she use the cell phone when she’s in her apartment? We see her use it elsewhere. And who uses rotary phones anymore? Even if you have a land line, it’s not a rotary phone with a dial, but the one in this movie is, and there’s no mention that it’s some neat antique. It’s just there, in the apartment. This bugged me throughout the whole movie.

Also, even if Mary wanted to keep a land line, why doesn’t she just change her phone number? Or, here’s a concept: call the police!! Mary does none of these things, which seems like just an excuse to keep the story going. There were plenty of ways Mary could have gotten rid of Rose before all the SINGLE WHITE FEMALE psycho stuff started happening. There was some lazy writing in this one.

At first, I was intrigued by the concept of Mary receiving phone calls from someone living in 1979. I was eager to learn where this was going to go.

However, as the movie moves along, the explanations falter because there are a lot of holes in the plot. When Rose takes action in 1979, it affects Mary in 2011, but these actions and results don’t always make sense. If Rose were to murder someone in 1979, someone who Mary had already met in 2011, would they suddenly be dead in 2011 after Rose murdered them? I’m not sure if that’s how it would work, and this happens several times. It’s all so neat and convenient, it didn’t really ring true for me.

Plus, how is it that Rose can find these people who Mary knows now in 2011 so easily back in 1979? They’re still all living in the same area? Really?

Also, Rose’s voice on the phone sounds like she’s an old lady, like someone in her 70s. She’s supposed to be 41. This would make sense if Mary is speaking to Rose in 2011 because that’s the age she would be now, but initially, Rose says it’s 1979. Why would Rose lie? Again, lazy writing. I mean, at times, THE CALLER is on the verge of being a very clever movie, but each chance it gets at accomplishing this feat, it drops the ball.

The cast isn’t bad. I enjoyed Rachelle Lefevre in the lead role as Mary Kee. She had a very likeable personality, and she’s good-looking to boot! She would have been good enough to carry this movie had the story been better. One drawback to her performance is, for someone who’s being threatened, she makes Mary awfully passive.

The same can be said for the whole movie. There’s something very passive about it. It definitely lacks intensity.

Stephen Moyer is okay as John, Mary’s boyfriend, but he’s another passive, rather dull character. Ed Quinn does a nice job making Mary’s ex-husband Steven a complete creep and a jerk, but ultimately he’s stuck in a wasted subplot. Lorna Raver plays Rose, and we don’t get to see her until the end of the movie. She’s okay, but she’s certainly not a good enough villainess to carry this movie, so ultimately, she’s a disappointment.

The same can be said for both the directing and writing for this one. THE CALLER was directed by Matthew Parkhill, and although there are some nicely shot scenes, the movie as a whole lacks pacing and urgency. For a thriller, it’s awfully mild.

The screenplay by Sergio Casci has a lot of problems, mostly associated with its time shift/alternate universe plot, which really needs to make more sense. The threat against Mary also needs to be greater and more detailed. The story and the writing as a whole need to be much tighter.

I was interested in the premise of THE CALLER, and for most of the first half of this movie I was into it, but I expected better explanations and resolutions, and some thrills and chills along the way would have been most welcome. The ending is also a disappointment, as things wrap up way too easily.

As it stands, THE CALLER is a mediocre thriller that never gets into a groove or hits its stride. This is one call you’d best hang up on.

—END—

© Copyright 2012 by Michael Arruda

Director – Matthew Parkhill

Cast – Rachelle Lefevre, Stephen Moyer, Luis Guzmán, Ed Quinn, Lorna Rayer

Release Year – 2011

Reviewed by John of the Dead

This is a film that had interested me for quite some time due to its unique storyline that I figured would suck me in from the get-go. Finally presented with an opportunity to view this piece, I must say that the storyline is everything that I expected it to be – engaging, ever-developing, and tense – and complimented with positive direction The Caller wound up as one of the better horror films of 2011 despite a few faults that thankfully were not enough to ruin the experience for me.

Recently divorced Mary Kee is suffering the troubles of starting over with a new life, but her troubles worsen when soon after moving into a new apartment she begins to experience mysterious phone calls from a strange woman. The calls are harmless at first, but when Mary learns the meaning behind the calls she finds herself in a paranormal battle with a woman terrifying her in strange and unusual fashion.

If you know me then you know that I love films involving someone moving into a new residence and suffering the horrors associated with the residence that they were not aware of beforehand, and when you throw in the added effect of a creepy caller it just makes things all-the-more interesting for me. Things start a bit slow, but it does not take long before Mary is forced to endure the daily calls from a mysterious woman looking for someone that she believes to live in Mary’s apartment, and slowly but surely numerous developments arise that add some nice chills to the matter, and in supernatural form. Eventually we learn that the woman is in fact calling from the past, and with numerous tie-ins to Mary’s childhood, all elements that I never saw coming but ones that I gladly accepted as they added a very unique take to this “new tenant” idea that I enjoy so dearly. As these developments progressed I did find the film harder and harder to follow, and I will let you know now that this is a film you definitely want to pay close attention to, and not be side-tracked or fooled by its slow start. The supernatural elements eventually turn this piece into one apparently (never find out 100%) warping numerous dimensions into one, in which whatever happens in one dimension affects the other two. In a sense this experience heads the way of Christopher Smith’s Triangle at times, which thankfully never became convoluted as other films tend to suffer when they bring in too many creative ideas at one time. Aside from this we are given a strong sub-plot involving Mary’s husband who constantly harasses her and disregards the restraining order against him, which is sure to add a depressing feel to this sad film due to how hard-to-watch some of those scenes are. I did find a few faults in the storyline, which all had to do with character usage. We are given a few characters that honestly came off as characters writer Sergio Casci felt that he needed to include, but were otherwise worthless due to how he used them. I was very much displeased with the usage of Mary’s pseudo love interest John Guildi, who played a fairly prominent role in the film for the first two acts but then was suddenly cut off for the rest of the film, never once again appearing on screen. I am not sure what happened, and if there were possibly some third act scenes with him that were just deleted, but idea was a stupid one nonetheless that held this piece back a bit. I do applaud Mr. Guildi for really trying though, and for giving us a very unique storyline that came out much more complex than I imagined.

Director Matthew Parkhill did a good job delivering this story to us, giving us gloomy sets and grainy cinematography very much reminiscent of the sad subject matter the story brings us. His execution of the horror was great, giving us many chilling moments as each creepy development was brought to light, and the actress portraying the woman on the phone, Rose (Lorna Raver; Drag Me To Hell), was equally great in her execution of her character, who never makes an on-screen appearance and is forced to use her voice (accompanied by Parkhill’s direction) to deliver some good chills. The rest of the character performances were positive, some more than others of course, and Parkhill’s musical score was enjoyable and fit the mood of the film very well. Most of the “horror” provided comes from the developments, although we do get a few good scenes of tangible horror that managed to give a few good shocks, showing Parkhill has what it takes to give us a solid horror experience.

Overall, The Caller is a positive horror experience that gives us great atmosphere, positive direction, and a very engaging story that consist of numerous developments that further its enjoyable complexity. There are a few faults here and there, but for the film this is it is very much worth a positive recommendation.

Rating: 7/10