Don't get me wrong, I love the sight of a 20-year-old beauty with (very) big breasts and a slender bum parading around in her revealing underwear for two hours just as much as any healthy man. Maybe even more... I'll even admit the trailer full of images of the scantily dressed and voluptuous Jordan Phipps heavily influenced me purchasing the DVD of "Close Calls". But all this still doesn't make it acceptable that a girl's jiggling pink bra and tight blue panties should form the only memorable things in a horror/thriller that proudly refers to itself as a "neo-giallo".
Speaking of which, what the heck is a "neo-giallo" anyways? The back of the Blu-Ray exclaims that "Close Calls" is similar and living up to the finest work of Dario Argento. Is there someone out there who honestly thinks so? Just because your film features a crazy old witch in a surreal attic, it doesn't mean can compare to "Suspiria". And just because someone is pressing random keys on a synthesizer device, it doesn't mean your soundtrack must be interpreted as an homage to Claudio Simonetti/Goblin. This movie isn't a Giallo, it's not even a horror movie as far as I'm concerned.
Morgan is a rebellious teenager with issues. Her mother died, but her father is about to remarry a deranged woman who hates her. She experiments with pretty much every type of drugs she can get her hands on, and she's grounded for getting caught whilst doing naughty things with her doofus boyfriend. Morgan must stay at the house alone, and feed medication to her ailing grandmother, when she suddenly starts receiving menacing and perverted phone calls from an unknown psycho.
As you can tell, there are plenty of potentially great ideas in "Close Calls", but writer/director Richard Stringham doesn't elaborate any of them properly. The film cashes in on the popular trend of looking retro-80s, but doesn't have a soul or personality of its own. Phipps's performance is more than decent, but every other actor/actress in this film is atrocious to behold. As much as I keep hoping to encounter clever and imaginative new horror movies, the sad truth is that "Close Calls" is pretentious, boring, substantially void, and at least half an hour too long.
