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75
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San Francisco Chronicle Mick LaSalle
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.
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75
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Entertainment Weekly
Surprisingly good, and surprisingly gruesome, fun.
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70
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The Hollywood Reporter Todd McCarthy
The Call for the most part is a tense, extreme-jeopardy thriller that delivers the intended goods.
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60
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New York Daily News Elizabeth Weitzman
No one's winning any awards for The Call. But at least the award winners know how to make it worth our while.
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50
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Boston Globe Ty Burr
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.
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50
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Philadelphia Inquirer Steven Rea
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.
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50
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USA Today Claudia Puig
The action starts with a bang, but deteriorates and grows more absurd as the story strays farther from the LAPD call center.
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50
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The Globe and Mail (Toronto) Liam Lacey
For its last third, the entire thing gets a Frankensteinian head transplant, and turns into derivative serial-killer nonsense.
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50
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Chicago Sun-Times
A sputtering, so-so B thriller with a neat hook but very little personality.
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45
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NPR Ian Buckwalter
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.
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