The Call

WWE Studios continues to crank out actual movies with actual actors, as in this mostly entertaining 911-thriller The Call. Halle Berry stars as a fierce 911 dispatcher whose eagerness to help inadvertently gets a kidnapped teenager killed. When the killer's next victim (Abigail Breslin) tries calling for help, Berry is forced to take over and try to stop another young girl from being murdered. For awhile, that's all pretty exciting. Director Brad Anderson (Session 9) ratchets up the tension by focusing on the helplessness both characters struggle against; Breslin trapped in a car trunk, and Berry unable to physically intervene. That is, until Berry physically intervenes. Mutating from damaged 911 operator to brutal action heroine, Berry becomes Jodie Foster at the end of Silence of the Lambs when she opts to hunt down the deranged killer without police in a dramatically stupid third act. A disappointing failure, for audiences and Vince McMahon. —Jacob Boon