Years ago, a friend once asked me what a large whisk broom that I was holding was for. The response was something to the effect of ‘What do you think it’s for?’ Certain things are obvious even if some people refuse to see what is happening around them, even in film. The Texas-made film THOSE WHO CALL (2023) is one of those works on the screen that show the obvious not with style or flair.
The picture is helmed by Cuban-born Writer/Director Anubys Lopez with a cast of Latino leads in the person of Yetlanezi Rodriguez (Sandra) and Angie Sandoval (Ana). The film opens with a prologue that many in the genre have seen before and for some reason, filmmakers continue to mine ever since Camille Keaton went on a fateful drive to Connecticut in I Spit On Your Grave (1978) that is the solitary woman who runs into vehicle trouble in a lonely part of the country. Update this trouble to not having any GPS or phone service and a torn tyre on a lonely road one finds that Lauren (Reese Fast) is going to be in trouble.
It works well for an opening with Lauren doing well with what little dialogue she has. She walks in the night to find help only to come upon a bunch of people in robes burying some twitching people. Her discovery of this unsavoury lot does not go well as one can imagine and imagine we do because there is a segue to two different people, sisters Ana and Sandra, driving in daylight in the same area.
Arriving in a small Texas town, they are a family trying to rekindle after being apart and find themselves stranded in the middle of nowhere with no escape despite a series of attempts. The viewer is treated to a series of inane background stories in different locations all delivering a screechy voice that sounds like nails on a blackboard when at a high pitch. I challenge the audience to take a drink or do something every time the name Ana is spoken, or Sandra tells Ana to ‘calm down’ and ‘everything will be alright.’
THOSE WHO CALL (2023) features sluggish pacing and an inappropriate symphonic music score that is credited at the end longer than the actors and crew. The script seems cobbled together with scenes with the idea to add this because we need to plug and play this moment. There are no driving points or spine to the story even with the dumb payoff at the end. The director is noted in his bio as having a surprise or shocking ending to his films, well in this case it’s not and there is no film to end. The bio further states ‘All his films are made purposely to make audiences feel uneasy and uncomfortable.’ Well, it does for all the wrong reasons.
To be fair there are some moments such as the prologue and a sequence near a river when blood suddenly appears in the water. One perks up thinking ah yes a moment we can get something when Sandra shrieks in that banshee voice ‘Is the water safe?’ and continues to babble. One does get to see someone other than the white Anglo-Saxon females being menaced by a script and their own voices.
Oh yes, the broom story from the start of this well in THOSE WHO CALL (2023) (which I don’t understand the title unless it refers to phone service) is a moment when it’s dark and Ana asks Sandra for a flashlight. Sandra asks in a whinny voice ‘What for?’ Case closed. Watch this film for the drone shots.
Those Who Call is available to rent/buy on Amazon Prime Video in the USA.
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1.5
