THOSE WHO CALL ** USA 2023 Dir: Anubys Lopez. 79 mins
Arriving in a small Texas town, sisters Sandra (Yetlanezi Rodriguez) and Ana (Angie Sandoval) are hoping to use the trip to rekindle their relationship after years of being strained only to find themselves stranded in the middle of nowhere. While they’re in the middle of the experience, they start to get hints of something supernatural happening around them that starts to hint at the presence of a sadistic pagan cult in the area trying to use them as the latest offerings in a gruesome human sacrifice ritual. Realizing there’s no other way around it, they try to put their skills to the test to get out of the situation alive.
“Those Who Call” was a rather decent if unspectacular genre effort. The general atmosphere of the town generates a highly unnerving setup featuring the girls driving through the deserted backwoods community and encountering the locals with their cryptic behavior warning them away which leads to them being lost in the woods with the slow build-up to the two getting stranded. With the exploits here gradually becoming creepier the longer they’re out in the woods, it sets this one up nicely for the final half where everything comes together following the solid series of chases and revelations made about the leader and their plan which helps to explain some of the actions from before. These features are enough to make this one enjoyable enough to be watchable. The main issue with this one is the utterly moronic decision-making that goes on with Sandra and Ana who are just about unbearable spending the entire time engaging in one contrarian argument after another trying hopelessly to fuel the tension between them that wouldn’t be bad if any of the arguments had a sense of validity behind them. That becomes almost as damaging as the secondary drawback this causes in the sluggish and dragged-out pacing taking over an hour before anything starts happening in earnest. The other factor here is the film’s low-budget limitations during the night sequences which are so dark that it’s nearly impossible to tell what’s going on which makes these a pain to get through and ends up holding this back overall.
Review by Don Anelli
THOSE WHO CALL is available to rent/buy on Amazon Prime Video in the USA