If you’ve ever wondered what would happen if someone mashed Are You Afraid of the Dark? with a Spirit Halloween clearance bin and then sprinkled in two horror legends as human air fresheners, The Call (2020) is your answer. Unfortunately, the answer is “not much” – except a lot of yelling, fog, and regret.
Set in Fall 1987, though you’d be forgiven for thinking it’s “Generic Horror Time,” the movie follows a group of unlikeable teens who spent their free time tormenting Edith Cranston (Lin Shaye), the local “witch” who mostly seems guilty of owning creepy curtains. Edith dies in what is technically a plot point, and her grieving husband Edward (Tobin Bell) decides that the most reasonable response is to install a phone… in her coffin… and make the kids call it.
You know, like you do.
The Setup: Press 1 for Trauma, Press 2 for Hell
Edward invites the teen bullies over and pitches his very normal, totally rational idea:
-
There’s a phone in Edith’s casket.
-
Each kid has to go into the funeral home alone, call the coffin phone, and stay on the line for one minute.
-
If they manage that, they get a bunch of money.
That’s the whole plan. It’s like Fear Factor if Joe Rogan were a quietly seething widower with a rotary phone and too much time.
They reluctantly agree, because horror movie teenagers are physically incapable of saying, “No, actually, this sounds like a hate crime and a lawsuit.”
Of course, when they call the phone, someone picks up. And by “someone,” I mean “budget hell dimension with fog machine.”
From there, each character gets their own little tour through personal guilt, trauma, and bad lighting, as the movie tries very hard to convince us this is deep and psychological rather than “Go to Hell: The Haunted House Edition.”
The Teens: Anti-Charisma Squad
Our main group of tormentors-turned-victims consists of:
-
Chris (Chester Rushing) – The new guy in town with a Sad Backstory™ and the personality of a folded denim jacket.
-
Tonya (Erin Sanders) – The one with slightly more acting range and slightly less reason to still be hanging out with these idiots.
-
Zack (Mike C. Manning) – Aggression with hair gel.
-
Brett (Sloane Morgan Siegel) – The kind of follower who would absolutely join a cult if it had snacks.
The film clearly wants us to care about these people once we learn their tragic histories. Unfortunately, it spends the first act making them completely insufferable, so by the time Hell starts calling back, you’re kind of rooting for the casket.
They torment Edith because… she’s sad and older? She runs a daycare and one of the kids went missing years ago, so everyone decides she must be a witch. Absolutely nothing about their initial cruelty feels earned, motivated, or even coherent. They’re just Mean Teens because the script says so, like a PS2 game tutorial that never got the rest of the level.
The Legends: Shaye & Bell vs. The Script
Lin Shaye and Tobin Bell are the movie’s main selling point, and to be fair, they’re the only reason it’s even watchable.
-
Lin Shaye (Edith Cranston)
Shaye could read a grocery list and make it unsettling. Here, she’s given:-
A tragic backstory
-
A witchy reputation
-
About three scenes before she dies and becomes… phone content
She does her best to make Edith more than “sad old lady plus curse,” but the script never really lets her transcend “plot device with a cardigan.”
-
-
Tobin Bell (Edward Cranston)
Bell, best known for asking people if they want to play a game, is basically playing “Jigsaw: Retirement Years.” Calm, bitter, and oddly formal, he invites the kids in, explains the rules of the phone stunt, and delivers exposition with the resignation of a man who knows he is better than this material.
You get the sense these two actors are living in a much better movie—one about grief, guilt, and small-town hysteria. Sadly, The Call keeps yanking us back to the teens and the Hellworld Escape Room behind the metaphorical Spencer’s Gifts.
The Call(s): Dial H for Hell
Each time a teen picks up the coffin phone, they’re pulled into a surreal nightmare where Edith (or Hell, or trauma, or all of the above) forces them to relive the awful things they did or endured.
In theory, this could have been:
-
Cathartic
-
Complex
-
Emotionally resonant
In practice, it’s:
-
Loud
-
Confusing
-
Weirdly repetitive
The “Hell” we’re shown feels like the haunted house at a pop-up pumpkin patch: dark hallways, flickery lights, screaming, and set pieces that seem pulled from a warehouse of generic horror props.
You don’t get a strong sense of rules. Is Edith in control? Is Hell just vibing? Is this supernatural justice, a curse, a metaphor, or all of them thrown together like a half-baked casserole? The movie never really commits.
Tone: 1987 Called, It Wants a Rewrite
The film is set in 1987, but aside from a few cars and outfits, you’d barely know. The aesthetic is more “vaguely retro” than authentically period. It feels like they picked the year just to avoid smartphones and Google, which, to be fair, is the only way this plot works.
Because if this were set today:
-
Someone would Google Edith.
-
Someone would record Edward’s casket-phone proposal.
-
Reddit would solve this in three threads and a meme.
Instead, we get kids who just accept:
“Here’s a coffin phone, go call my dead wife. For cash.”
and everyone is like, “Yeah, seems legit.”
Pacing & Plot Logic: Please Hold
Once the premise is in motion, the movie falls into a loop:
-
Teen enters funeral home.
-
Teen calls coffin phone.
-
Hell-ish flashback/vision sequence.
-
Teen screams, runs, or dies.
Rinse, repeat, with minor variations.
The problem is that it never escalates in a meaningful way. We don’t learn much more about Edith or Edward that deepens the horror beyond:
-
People were mean to Edith.
-
Edith might be a witch.
-
Edith is definitely mad.
The film flirts with ideas about guilt, abuse, and the cruelty people inflict out of fear, but never actually explores them. It’s like the script kept hitting “skip ad” on its own themes.
And don’t expect the ending to tie everything together. By the time the final “reveal” comes, it feels less like a twist and more like the movie softly whispering, “Look, we had to end somehow.”
Horror Elements: Jump Scares on Auto-Dial
The movie leans heavily on:
-
Jump scares
-
Loud stingers
-
Spooky faces in the dark
-
Distorted voices
Sometimes it works on a cheap, “gotcha” level. Mostly, though, it feels like a highlight reel of things you’ve seen done better literally hundreds of times.
There are occasional glimpses of something more interesting—a Hell that reflects personal guilt rather than random torment, an Edith whose rage is rooted in real suffering—but these glimpses are fleeting. The rest is just cinematic busywork.
Final Verdict: Hang Up
The Call had the ingredients for a solid little supernatural morality tale:
-
Two powerhouse horror icons
-
A juicy hook (call the coffin, face your sins)
-
A nostalgic 80s setting
Instead, it gives us:
-
Flat characters
-
A script that confuses repetition with tension
-
Hell sequences that feel like cutscenes from a middling horror game
If you’re a die-hard Lin Shaye or Tobin Bell completionist, you might get some enjoyment watching them try to class up the chaos. Everyone else might feel like they’ve been trapped on an eternal hold line with Hell’s customer support:
“Your soul is very important to us. Please stay on the line. The next available demon will be with you shortly.”
At least when I call tech support, they don’t charge me 90 minutes of my life.
