The Caller (1987)

(On Cable TV, July 2021) The life of an avid cinephile is not always fun — watch too many bad movies in a row, and you’ll start wondering why this is the hobby you’ve chosen. As you make your way out of the list of classics and start working on the rest, you’ll start fearing that you’ve seen all there is to see — that the future is going to be a parade of similar plots, clichés, undistinguishable characters and few surprises. But then there are movies like The Caller to give us hope all over again. To be clear, The Caller is not a big or perfect movie: It’s very nearly a theatrical piece, chiefly concerned with an elaborate cat-and-mouse verbal joust between a woman living alone in a house and a mysterious stranger who intrudes upon her life during one evening. It doesn’t take all that much time for a mysterious fog to permeate the film — the way the two speak to each other is not normal, and there’s clearly more than we’re seeing to their relationship. They overtly speak of murder and give each other points for seeing through their deception. The following day, their intricate dance continues with even more unexplainable exchanges and abnormal behaviour. It’s all compelling stuff, and the repartee here is quite good. The cast is minimal, but Malcolm McDowell brings his usual menace to the role, while Madolyn Smith looks beautiful and gives as good as she gets in the dialogue. You can keep guessing throughout the entire film (I still like my theory of this being extreme role-playing between a kinky couple), but I almost guarantee that when the finale hits, you’ll be still be amazed at it all. Now, I don’t think that the film makes a whole lot of sense when you factor in the conclusion, but there’s a lot more to it than the twist, and even knowing the twist is not enough to distract from the enjoyable moment-by-moment acting joust. The Caller may not even be a particularly good movie but it’s something rarer: a surprise, an original and a reassurance that the world of film is vast and will always contain something new.