Today’s modern multiplex horrors are a long way from the video nasties of the late 1970s and early 1980s. Everything is polished to perfection, with the best directors and actors money can buy, and there’s plenty of the green stuff. Whereas cheap and nasty horrors may look low budget, but they often involve a lot more invention and dedication to bring them to fruition. Night Caller recalls those days of gore.
Clementine Carter (Susan Priver) is the best Telephone psychic Jade (Bai Ling) has and is popular with the customers. When she takes a call from a James Smith (Steve Railsback), her complicated past comes back to haunt her. She starts to have premonitions of his murders before he commits them. Enlisting the help of her invalid father (Robert Miano), she is determined to track him down and put an end to his reign of terror.
There’s a lot to like in Night Caller. Writer/Director Chad Ferrin clearly knows his stuff and there’s a great deal of care paid to the small details. Also, a fair amount of imagination to make the most of his budget. However, it also goes to places which it maybe shouldn’t and while there’s gore aplenty there is a deep vein of nastiness which feels at odds with modern filmmaking. Night Caller will appeal to those horror fans who yearn for their old VHS collection.
Night Caller is out on Digital HD and Cable VOD in North America on 13 May.
