MY CALL: An okay story executed brilliantly by an up-and-coming horrorsmith. Come, watch, enjoy. You won’t be riveted by any twists. But the journey will be an enjoyable, creepy one nonetheless. MORE MOVIES LIKE Oddity: Maybe What Lies Beneath (2000).
While renovating her remote country estate, Dani (Carolyn Bracken; You Are Not My Mother) is warned by a vagrant (Tadhg Murphy; The Northman) that someone has slipped into her home without her knowing. That night, Dani is brutally murdered.
A year has passed since her murder. Dani’s husband and the doctor attending to the disturbed man, Declan (Johnny French; Caveat) brings the deceased murderer’s glass eye to Dani’s sister Darcy (also played by Carolyn Bracken), a blind antique shopkeeper and psychic who wants to understand the motives of her sister’s murderer. Meanwhile, Declan’s girlfriend Yana (Caroline Menton) begins seeing Darcy in the house at night, as if she haunts the estate of her death. If there’s a favorite character to be chosen in this film, it’s the atmosphere itself.
On the anniversary of Dani’s death, Darcy arrives unannounced at Declan and Yana’s home with a disturbing life-sized, golem-like dummy. Darcy seems insistent, and very agenda’d with her occult dummy, which is filled with tributes that smack of witchcraft. With Declan departing for the night shift, Yara is forced to spend the evening just as haunted by Darcy and the dummy as she is by Dani’s ghost, who might be trying to warn her of something. What ensues is an incredibly creepy, supernatural thriller.
Writer and director Damian McCarthy (Caveat) has come to us with a decent idea and excellent execution and vision. As if building his own horror movie universe (a la The Conjuring et alia), the stuffed bunny from Caveat (2020) is among Darcy’s shelves of cursed curios, along with an icon from Monkey Shines (1988). The movie won’t dwell on this; it’s just a passing titillation. The also film populates our eyes with some gorgeous photography, along with a curious proclivity for beautifully centered shots. Understandably contrasting is the macabre imagery, including an obliterated head with flesh chunks dispersed across a bloody floor, and curious views of the position of the hideous dummy.
Truth be told, the execution and vision behind this film are superior to the story and its revelations. Still, McCarthy is clearly a filmmaker to keep an eye on anticipating his next move… just like Darcy’s ominous wooden dummy.