Close Calls

Lasted about half an hour to watch this. I hardly ever give poor rating to even bad horror movies nut had decided not to waste any more time Pity the movie was not around when I was 14 - i would have had surely watched it till the end focusing more on girl's curves than cheeze plot (figuratively & literally). Good effort in 2017 to make this movie look like it was made in 80's but this one still can hardly compete with even clap-trap stories of the 80's. You'd better of watching Michael Jackson's Thriller a few times to sober up from this "Close Calls" of 2017.

A gorgeously photographed fever dream of a movie that unfortunately has too many ideas floating around and competing for the spotlight to do any of them justice. You have a teenage "bad girl" forced to stay home and care for her ailing grandmother while her father and wicked stepmother-to-be go out to dinner. She gets really high and things start getting progressively weirder as she receives mysterious phone calls and her grandmother turns into a grotesque monster.

Nothing is ever really explained and the grandmother seems to only be there to give the lead a reason to stay home. She doesn't figure into any of the main action at all and is only really good for a few interesting shot moments of surrealism.

There's some obvious talent in front of and behind the camera, but the script isn't as flawless as the visual elements and it can make Close Calls feel a bit like a chore to sit through during certain moments, but when it comes to life, it can be really interesting. At least the filmmakers were going for something different and it's not another boring slasher movie we've seen a trillion times.

The movie is fairly entertaining, although I doubt I could watch it if the hot girl wasn't in her underwear for the entire movie. Maybe you need to be trippin or smokin salvia for it to make sense. It had potential to be better, but was just way too confusing as to what was fantasy and what was reality. If you watch it just don't expect it to make sense, but know that your reward for making it (or fast forwarding) to the end, is the bra finally gets lost in the last few minutes.

After watching this far too long and pretty dull movie right to the disappointing, meaningless ending I do wonder what it is I actually was watching. This is certainly not a horror movie nor is it a thriller. In that genre you need a plot and also some sort of conclusion. I guess the best description of this movie would be soft porn for sadists, as the seminude protagonist does get mentally and physically tortured a lot. Drug users also might find the nonsensical storyline appealing, as it defies any logic or reason. Being high probably also helps with the laughably amateurish acting. I have seen better acting in professional adult movies. Actually the only professional thing about this movie were the very elabourate sets. They didnt make sense, as the interior design of the house is a curious mishmash of mixed up floor plans (Grandmas bizarre tower room is just impossible constructionwise) styles, time periods and religious themes, but somebody actually spent a lot of effort here, which cant be said about the sloppily thrown together bag of ideas in the script and the hilarious casting.

I must admit that I was initially intrigued by this 2017 horror/thriller movie's cover/poster, as it felt like something very retro and taking me back to the 1980s horror movies that I grew up on.

And I hadn't heard about the movie prior to sitting down to watch it, so I didn't know what the movie was about, nor did I know what I was in for. But hey, a horror movie with a cover such as the one it had, what could possibly go wrong?

Well, I suppose the utter lack of a proper storyline and the atrocious lack of anything worthwhile and interesting. I managed to endure a numbing 42 minutes of the ordeal that is known as "Close Calls" and then I saw that there was about 1 hour and 20 minutes to go of this boring heap of a stinker, and I just gave up. In the 42 minutes that I suffered through nothing, and I mean that literally, nothing of any interest had transpired. Well, unless you consider a scantily dressed young girl with massive attributes as interesting, well then you are in luck. Personally, I am watching movies for the entertainment value, and I was expecting this to be a horror movie, so sitting around watching her strut around in next to no clothing just didn't cut it for me.

And little did it help that the acting performances were dubious at best, and whatever supposed to be dialogue was just abysmal to listen to.

Yeah, this 2017 horror movie from writer and director Richard Stringham was a massive swing and a miss. And I can honestly say that I am never ever going to return to give the movie a second chance. I just honestly don't care one inch about the storyline - or lack thereof, more accurately - nor of the characters in the movie.

I am rating "Close Calls" a generous two out of ten stars, solely for the production value the movie had going for it. Sometimes it is better to just let the phone keep on ringing and go do something else entirely.