Future world Entertainment, presents Chinyere Okorie (Pamela Iredia), Kenneth Okonkwo (Nosa Iredia), Ujama Cbriel (Duke), Nita George (Yemisi), Loveth Snow (Venessa Iredia), Ashada Maledo. Screenplay by Angel Amuzuo-Maledo; Director, Paul Papel: Producer/Executive producer, Chinyere Okorie; Production Manager, Chris Maledo; Director of Photography, Omoleye OOladwkojo. (C 2016)
One thing about modern storytellers, they’re always telling someone’s story that they’ve salvaged, repackaged, turned it on its head and claimed it as theirs, and they’ll be wanting accolades for it, those screenwriters, shame on them all. And when, under the influence of a beer or two in an uptown watering hole, and drunk on the spur of their successes at film festivals, one would brag, almost hiccupping to a young paparazzi, “My story is original. First of its kind.” Original, my foot.
I’m just playing! But, whoever hasn’t stolen another man’s idea and claimed it their own, of course, the Chinese are experts at such. It has been this way since the Bible. Since the one hundred and fourteen surahs with its 6,666 verses of the Quran, and since the Five Books of the Torah, Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy, and Homer’s Iliad. Are they all not talking about love, deceits, hatred, adventures, and all? Stories are always remanufactured, embellished, and defaced, and presented to us on a different platter.
The Caller, like a movie title, is a water-down signature since the dawn of Hollywood to the world over. America and Europe have told their types of ‘Caller’ movies. India has too. China has a couple. You bet it’s a title that throws a chill up your spine. Imagine the creepy feeling responding to a phone call in the middle of the night from an unknown hooded guy, by the roadside, calling from a public telephone, and then the line goes burp. Dead! Or a strange caller who starts to tell you your life story and promises menacing events are coming your way. It could be a prank, to which I attest. But it is a caller from without, and it’s creepy your hair rises! You want to yell! You want to call the cops!
Here is a perfect scenario for a ‘Caller,’ type movie: The Scene:
You are a spinster, alone, just from the shower, towel around your waist in your third-floor apartment bedroom, overlooking a busy uptown thoroughfare, then your telephone rings. You grab it. You’ve been expecting this call from the ‘girls,’ this Saturday evening.
You, “Hello?”
No answer at the other end, and you dropped the call. The phone rings again, and you go for it and puts it to your ear.
You, “Hello? …Who is this?”
The Caller, “An old friend, and a secret admirer.”
You, “What do you want, and how do you get my number?”
The Caller, “The internet, the trash can, no one hides these days. Hey, look outside your window I can almost smell the Elizabeth Arden you wafted on your neck, after the shower.”
You look around the room, and then down at the Caller in the booth.
The Caller, “I’m calling from the phone booth across your apartment…I know everything about you…The only thing I’m not so sure about you is if, after the shower, you wore your red designer panty, you laid out on the bed.”
You lift the towel off your lap, and it shows you are wearing the red designer panty. You freak out. You look around the room again; now, you are tense and in panic. With the phone still to your ear, you rush out of the room then come back with a flashing kitchen-knife in your hand.
The Caller, “If I were you, I wouldn’t do that.”
The phone goes dead on you, and you peep outside, the public telephone is dangling by its silver cord, and the caller has disappeared.
The dialogue between you and the unknown caller runs a chill up the spine. It dawns on you, and you are vulnerable.
I already guess the type of story Angel Amuzuo-Maledo, is trying to tell here in her The Caller story. To the film buff, you walk into the same storyline of Sleepless In Seattle (1993), turned on its head. Sleepless is a story about a boy, Jonah (Ross Mallinger), who calls into a talk-radio show, looking for a wife for his father, Sam Baldwin (Tom Hanks), who has lost his wife. Sam is forced by his son to talk on the show. Annie Reed (Meg Ryan), a reporter in Baltimore, hears Sam on the show and falls in love with him. Both meet on top of the Empire State Building on Valentine’s Day. The Caller, however, is on a severe note than Sleepless. Sleepless gets you to cry here and there, but romantically, sets you on a path of recovery from a love once lost to death, to hope in a new one, and a living happily ever after.
The Nollywood Caller gets women in a Salone, young men at a bar, and two riders and their driver in a taxi-cab arguing and fighting. They are taking sides or opposing a desperate man, on a live tv screen, with a gun pointed at his wife and her lover. Both get caught having it out in his house. He vows to commit public double murder and to kill himself. The exciting part of the movie is that the man caught having the illicit love affair with a married woman, is the husband of a television show host of, ‘Share My Pain,’ and to whom the enraged and desperate husband, calls to inform her about the situation in his house. She’s under the sword of Damocles, can’t you see?!
As the public is afraid of the outcome of the incident taking place on the screen, so is the host caught, publicly, in a dilemma. How can she continue the show with the usual composure, while at the same time talking the caller out of committing the murders, or at best, from killing her husband? At first, she couldn’t handle the impact of the discovery and wants to pull out of the show. The producers say, “No, no, the show must go on and with your face on the screen.”
If the audience thinks, the pretty face on the tv screen in their living room, every evening, has nothing to worry about, well, she’s also human. Pamela advised counseled married couples and has made beaucoup money off them, but just now, she is in a pickle of a dilemma of her life. She must manage the Caller from murdering her unfaithful husband and, at the same time, maintain her tv ratings.
I’m trying to be honest about this review. Yeah, I’m talking like I have never been straightforward. Of course, I’ve been. I’m only trying to reiterate my honesty, that’s all. The Caller has some weaknesses; I won’t forgive. A film of this nature starts by putting us on the edge of our couches, by letting our hairs stand on end. We are afraid this man will blow the head of his wife and the husband of the host and blows himself too, and the blood would splatter all over the tv screen, and our children would freak out too, right in front of us. Isn’t that something? But no. The way the drama ends doesn’t justify the narrative nature. Duke wants to commit double murder and suicide on screen in the presence of the public, and we alert the law, but we didn’t see the law actively involved. Couldn’t there had been a standoff with the law?
The law gets invited, and we expect a standoff with the police. We saw nothing. In stories of this nature, the fact that Duke wants to commit mass murder is a crime in itself, and the law won’t let him. I guess even Pamela says so. We are not so much interested in the scene where Pamela kisses her husband, but we want to know how Duke and his wife compromised after this incident. So far, there is no kicker in the story. Give us a standoff like in Dog Day Afternoon (1975). The police on one side of the equation, the public agitated at street corners and a confused host trying her best to control her show. I am disappointed, to be honest.
Apart from the accusatory fingers, this story is pointing at modern working-class society and marriage, from a sociological point of view. Nollywood must let us know, people who attempt public mass murders and suicide and got caught, are not typical and must be thorough in mentally investigating the culprits, and taken away in handcuffs. For example, Letters to My Mother. The Caller never got that far, but hurries to show the Iredia family kissing, safely in their living room. Did the story concern itself so much with the talk-show hostess and her husband than the young couple? I believe Duke and his wife play essential roles in bringing out the crux of the story. Where is the equilibrium between the two couples in the story?