VividSimon Simply Perfect

Onlinewsma Absolutely Brilliant!

Catangro After playing with our expectations, this turns out to be a very different sort of film.

Sarita Rafferty There are moments that feel comical, some horrific, and some downright inspiring but the tonal shifts hardly matter as the end results come to a film that's perfect for this time.

slayrrr666 "The Calling" is a really dull and lifeless horror film.**SPOILERS**Recovering in a Church hospital, Kristie St. Clair, (Laura Harris) reveals how her romance with journalist Marc, (David Lintern) soon transferred into marriage. When son Dylan, (Alex Roe) is born, both are extremely happy about becoming parents. When he gets into late childhood, he suddenly starts acting weird, while her husband backs up his every move. Constantly being told that she has a connection with the birth of the Jesus, she ignores them even though the weird events surrounding her start to tell her otherwise. When she is finally confronted with the news that her child has been taken in by a demonic cult which hopes to use him for the birthing of the Antichrist, she races to find a way to get him away from the followers of the cult.The Good News: This here wasn't all that terrific, but did have a few good moments. This is almost solely relegated to individual scenes to make it interesting. Only a handful are really good, mostly because they are the ones where something happens. The biggest involves the method of dealing with the child at the beach. This is quite a fun scene as it gets interesting and gives a few really nice moments. There's others spread out through the film, including the conversation in the car and the birthday party celebration that get quite entertaining, but only the funeral scene comes close to the beach moment. This is one of the best scenes in the film, and ends the film on a great note since it's just as action-packed and chilling as anything that came before. This here really makes the film watchable.The Bad News: This here has a couple of really big flaws. One of the big ones is the film doesn't do anything. There are large portions of the film where nothing happens and it gets old and dull quite easily. Watching those kinds of scenes doesn't inspire fear at all, since all it does is just stand around with each other talking about the situation. That doesn't bode well for generating excitement or suspense, which is another problem. This here doesn't have much of any suspense in it, and this is due to two key things. Part of it is due to the fact that it's only attempts to do something interesting are explained rather than shown. The dog attack should've been one, but as done in the film, it's explained afterward. This happens far too often in the film, and that makes for some really dull viewing amidst the missed opportunities. Another part is that the film hardly ever goes for horror on-screen. The real moments where it tries to get to be a horror film are beset by the fact that it will cut away before anything can happen, and in turn not even being granted much in the way of aftermath violence makes it feel like a really weak horror film. The last flaw is the sheer predictability of the film. This one plays out just about every trick in the book and hits them out to the letter. This makes the film feel like every other horror film like this since it does nothing new, and that can really hurt a film. These here all really lower the film.The Final Verdict: Not a whole lot of time spent on the horror and too many flaws makes this one a really dull experience. Really only see this one if looking to complete a night of a similarly-theme viewing, but there's far better ones out there in this genre to make this one seem special or important in any way.Rated R: Violence, Language, mild animal torture and a mild, non-explicit sex scene

ozthegreatat42330 This film is not exactly awful, but it is close. If you saw the omen films and enjoyed them, then you can safely give this one a miss. I wanted to like this film, but it rambled too much only to arrive at... nowhere. I had only heard of two of the actors in this film and frankly surprised that they would lend themselves to such mediocre parts. And the film was obviously made on a budget of $17.95.The basic premise was sound, but the script did not follow through and the suspense was not there. Within the first ten minutes you figured out where it was going to go and it was all down hill. There are a couple of disturbing scenes which really did not add to the film and I for one and tired of seeing the skin-head as thug sidekick/follower/disciple characters that seem to inhabit these cheap horror want-to-be films. To be or not to be-this film wasn't.

José Luis Rivera Mendoza (jluis1984) A young American woman gets married with a famous British newscaster, and apparently lives a perfect life in the Isle of Man until she discovers that his husband is part of a satanic cult trying to start the Antichritst's reign over Earth.Sounds familiar? This movie gives more than a nod to horror classics "Rosemary's Baby" and "The Omen"; as its plot is like a mixture of both story lines with not even a quarter of the magnificence of those movies.Richard Caesar's debut is a low-budget movie that puts Laura Harris in Mia Farrow's role as Kristie, the woman trapped in a blasphemous conspiracy by her husband Marc St. Claire (Richard Lintern). Betrayed by everyone, it is up to her to save the soul of her son Dylan (Alex Roe) who plays the role of hateful evil kid perfectly.The movie's main problem is the lack of originality and poor development of the script, nothing really outstanding happens and it is quite formulaic; the characters' actions are unrealistic, and the dialogs are uninspired. However, the ending is particularly good, and it is a shame that one has to endure more than 70 boring and tedious minutes to arrive to the only good part of the movie.The acting is nothing special and while Laura Harris makes a good lead, her character has some of the worst lines in the movie. It is a shame to see her waste her talent like that. On the other hand, Francis Magee has the best part in the movie as the mysterious taxi driver Carmac, and he easily steals every scene he is in.The movie has a nice photography considering the low-budget, and the Isle of Man serves as a beautiful and different location. Caesar's direction is quite typical for modern day suspense thrillers but it works and the movie flows at good pace.It is definitely not a bad movie, as even with its flaws it still manages to entertain and has a few good things to offer (specially the ending); however, there are similar movies that are far superior than "The Calling" as it stays in a mediocre level. 5/10

johanleupen This typical straight-to-video release (complete with washed up actors that used to belong to the C-list) goes where countless films have gone before: a young mother gives birth to a child that seems to be uncommonly fascinated by morbidity, torture, death, or generally speaking all things evil. Naturally people around the once happy couple start dying left and right and our young female protagonist, estranged from her surroundings, starts to wonder whether or not this is related to her son's need to impale his pet guinea pig. People, it has all been done before in a much more satisfying fashion, see Rosemary's Baby, The Omen, The Exorcist, Poltergeist, or even The Devil's Advocate, Eyes Wide Shut or The Ninth Gate for all I care but don't waste precious time that could be spend delving into the many great works that cinema has to offer.