Nonureva Really Surprised!

Senteur As somebody who had not heard any of this before, it became a curious phenomenon to sit and watch a film and slowly have the realities begin to click into place.

Orla Zuniga It is interesting even when nothing much happens, which is for most of its 3-hour running time. Read full review

Skyler Great movie. Not sure what people expected but I found it highly entertaining.

tigerfish50 Set in the wintry rural wasteland of Canada, 'The Calling' could be the bastard child of 'Fargo' and 'Omen'. A serial killer is quietly going about his business until depressed, alcoholic, pill-popping Sheriff Hazel is roused from her suicidal daydreams by the mutilated corpse of an elderly female acquaintance. After she discovers several other mutilated remains have been scattered around the frozen countryside, Hazel begins to suspect one of cinema's most blood-curdling stock villains is on the prowl in the precinct. Scoffed at by her superior, she marshals the small town's oddball duo of police officers and their perky receptionist to catch themselves a deranged predator. Soon they are detecting like big city gumshoes, sipping strong black coffee in their cruisers and hot on the maniac's trail.The script reveals some glaring holes as Hazel's team uncovers an occult connection linking the killings, but decent acting papers over some of these threadbare patches. When a few of the loose ends are tied up at the conclusion, the killer turns out to be a fairly routine lunatic. The rationale for his murderous activities is the standard silliness for this genre of film, leaving 'The Calling' exposed as a rather tired old workhorse.

craig-hopton An OK movie in the format of detective-hunts-serial killer, with a religious element that gives it some additional interest.Susan Sarandon, as you'd expect, puts in a good performance as the small town detective determined to solve the crime.Christopher Heyerdahl is also good as the kind-eyed murderer who believes (and eventually has the audience somewhat believing) that what he's doing is in a good cause.But overall the format isn't that original or exciting. There aren't any heart- stopping moments.It's a good detective story, no more, no less.

Robert J. Maxwell I wouldn't bother with this tale of yet another serial killer working his way across Canada and disrupting the quiet life of police officer Susan Sarandon. It's completely implausible and except for Susan Sarandon's performance it just another piece of serial killer junk with Christopher Heyerdahl as the priestly murderer trying to kill a dozen people in order to raise his brother, now soaked in formaldehyde, from the dead.There is some Latin mumbo jumbo about an ancient Christian blessing that is difficult to connect to the story. Even less comprehensible is the requisite clues that the killer leaves behind -- the mouths of his victims shaping the Latin expression for "free us." Nothing in the secret blessing about that, but plenty about it in the script. The killer must always leave behind some puzzle for the police to figure out, whether it's in the shape of a pentagram or quotations from "Through the Looking Glass." How can the murderer shape the vocal organs -- the tongue, the teeth, the lips -- of his victims before rigor, you ask? There are some things man was never meant to know.Sarandon does her usual professional job. She's aging but there's a certain elegance in aging features and a thin line between beauty and baseness. Ellen Burstyn is pretty good too, as Sarandon's earthy mother. Heyerdahl, groomed in such a way as to make his skull seem abnormal, will make your hair stand on end. Aside from that, the film isn't worth going on about.

David Arnold Inspector Hazel Micallef, a Fort Dundas police officer living with her mother Emily, has her normally quiet routine interrupted when she is called to check in on Delia Chandler, a local elderly resident, and finds Delia gruesomely murdered with her face moulded into an apparent open-mouthed scream. The local coroner, however, advises them that shaping the face would have required the killer to hold it in position for at least an hour post-mortem. When Micallef, along with detective Ray Green and new officer Ben Wingate, find out that other murders have been committed with the same m.o., they realise that the killer is trying to convey a message and must be stopped before he kills again.First thing that you think of when you start watching The Calling is Fargo because this has a very similar look & feel to that film. Unfortunately, The Calling is just as boring as Fargo as well. The film starts out OK, not moving too fast and building up the story pretty nicely as it goes along, but it gets to a certain point where, instead of getting more exciting/thrilling, it goes the other way and gets slower.I enjoyed about the 1st 40 minutes or so as it was interesting and was good the way the plot was unfolding, but not long after that, my interest started to fade as it just started to get boring and I got to the point where I just didn't care why the killer was doing what he was doing.The movie's cast was pretty good with Susan Sarandon (even though I think she's HIGHLY overrated), Donald Sutherland (even if he is only in the film for a total of about 10 minutes), and Gil Bellows, but even they couldn't save this movie from being a bit or a snore-fest.The Calling, overall, is not that bad of a movie, but it's most definitely not the best.