Introduction: Rosemary, Damien, and Now Dylan
When horror films lean into satanic pregnancy and creepy children, they usually want to be compared to Rosemary’s Babyor The Omen. Unfortunately, The Calling (2000) invites that comparison and then immediately falls flat on its face like a toddler in roller skates. Directed by Richard Caesar (not the Roman, though the movie would’ve benefited from crucifixion), it’s a UK/German co-production that proves even two nations working together can’t save a film from mediocrity.
Instead of paranoia, dread, or actual horror, we get a film so lifeless it feels like a BBC afternoon drama where everyone forgot their lines but decided to keep rolling anyway.
The Setup: Picture-Perfect Until It Isn’t
Kristie St. Clair (Laura Harris) thinks she has it all: a charming husband, a picturesque British countryside home, a successful career, and a son who looks like the kind of kid that’d end up on a Gap Kids billboard. Of course, this being horror, that son—Dylan (Alex Roe)—is actually the Antichrist, because apparently Satan outsourced reproduction to suburban England.
Cue the sinister events: dead pets, weird friends, and a family falling apart faster than the script’s coherence. Instead of ratcheting up paranoia, though, the film treats these omens with the urgency of an ITV soap opera.
The Horror: Guinea Pig on a Stake and Other Highlights
The movie wants to disturb us with Dylan’s behavior. Exhibit A: he impales his guinea pig on a stake. That’s not scary, that’s an audition tape for a future serial killer episode of Law & Order: UK. Exhibit B: he’s indifferent to a friend’s death, which is less shocking than the fact that this film thinks apathy is terrifying. Every teenager in 2000 was apathetic—that’s not the Antichrist, that’s just puberty.
Marc (Richard Lintern), Kristie’s husband, also loses the plot. After being bitten by a dog, his overreaction is to hang the dog in the backyard like some sort of canine crucifixion. Between Dylan’s guinea pig kabob and Marc’s impromptu dog lynching, The Calling accidentally plays like a PETA recruitment video.
Alice Krige: Wasted Like Communion Wine
Alice Krige plays Elizabeth, the family friend who starts behaving like she’s auditioning to be Dylan’s stepmom. Krige is a magnetic actress—she’s the Borg Queen, for hell’s sake. Yet here, she’s relegated to passive-aggressively hovering around Kristie like a PTA mom plotting a coup at the bake sale. Instead of commanding menace, she feels like the creepy aunt who overstays her welcome at Christmas.
Supporting Cast: Taxi Drivers and Collar Tossers
Kristie gets help from a mysterious taxi driver, because apparently Satan’s biggest rival isn’t God, but London’s cab industry. This man seems to know far too much but is never explained. Maybe he’s an angel. Maybe he’s an exorcist. Maybe he just reads spoilers in the script. Who knows?
Then there’s Father Mullin (Peter Waddington), the obligatory priest who should be leading holy resistance against evil. Instead, he rips off his collar and literally throws it out the car window. Nothing says “faith in crisis” like littering. The ending feels less like triumph over evil and more like, “Well, that was a shift. Time for a pint.”
The Antichrist Himself: Dylan
The biggest issue is Dylan. Damien Thorn terrified us because he didn’t need to do much—the world seemed to fall apart around him. Dylan, meanwhile, looks like the kind of kid who’d be bullied on the playground until his demonic powers kicked in. His “evil” moments come off more bratty than apocalyptic. He’s less the son of Satan, more the child you pray isn’t seated near you on a flight.
By the time the film wants us to believe he’ll lead mankind into destruction, all we’ve seen is a guinea pig shish kabob and some creepy stares. Honestly, if this is the face of Armageddon, humanity might be fine.
The Atmosphere: British Countryside Ennui
Horror thrives on atmosphere: dread-filled music, claustrophobic settings, escalating paranoia. The Calling has…lots of pastoral shots of the British countryside. Rolling hills, quaint villages, chirping birds. It looks less like the end of days and more like an advert for a bed-and-breakfast.
The score tries to compensate with “spooky” tones but ends up sounding like leftover tracks from Casualty. Instead of tension, it feels like the build-up to a PSA about farm safety.
The Plot: Rosemary’s Baby Without the Bite
The film desperately wants to be Rosemary’s Baby. It borrows the premise of a woman realizing she’s mother to the Antichrist. But where Rosemary was trapped in a suffocating, gaslit nightmare, Kristie just looks mildly inconvenienced, like her Wi-Fi went out.
The pacing is glacial. We’re meant to watch Kristie lose her grip as her family pulls away, but the execution is so half-hearted you expect her to start Googling “parenting troubled kids” instead of facing down Satan.
By the time she escapes with Father Mullin, you’re begging for Satan to hurry up and end humanity just so the credits can roll.
The Ending: Apocalypse Later, I Guess
In theory, the finale should leave us shaken. Kristie flees the hospital with Father Mullin, who tosses his collar like yesterday’s trash, signaling maybe humanity’s doomed after all. But it doesn’t land. Instead of apocalypse, it feels like a mid-season cliffhanger for a soap opera called As the Devil Turns.
The film just sort of ends, as though the editor ran out of patience. There’s no catharsis, no real sense of closure. Just a sigh, a collar toss, and a vague implication that Dylan will still cause problems.
The Acting: Earnest but Embarrassing
Laura Harris tries her hardest as Kristie, but she’s stuck in a script that mistakes sighing for character development. Richard Lintern spends the film acting like a man whose favorite hobby is glaring at walls. Alice Krige does what she can with Elizabeth, but she deserves so much better. The rest of the cast could’ve been replaced with cardboard cutouts, and nobody would notice.
The Horror Legacy: Forgotten for Good Reason
The Calling wanted to ride the coattails of satanic-child classics but ended up forgotten even by people who worked on it. Its biggest contribution to horror is reminding us how hard it is to replicate what made The Omen terrifying. The fact that it co-starred Alice Krige and still ended up a dud is almost impressive in its incompetence.
Final Verdict: Dial 666 for Disappointment
The Calling is a horror film in name only, a limp attempt at satanic chills that never delivers on its premise. It’s Rosemary’s Baby without paranoia, The Omen without dread, and horror without teeth. It replaces terror with tedium and menace with melodrama.
