Director Charles Barker
Staring Morfydd Clark, Chris Obi, Parker Sawyers
Rated MA
Score 0/6

A group of online gamers are invited to try a state-of-the-art virtual reality video game but things take a turn for the sinister when these masters of the shoot ’em up discover they will literally be fighting for their lives.

Considering that The Call Up was Writer/Director Charles Barker’s first time directing a feature length movie I suppose I should say congratulations, unfortunately I have to add nice try fail. Apparently I got hold of this on its first day of release on DVD (well that’s what the guy at the friendly neighbourhood store told me) and I suppose this probably find its way on to the list of movies that I have ended up regretted buying simply because it was a wasted opportunity on the part of the filmmakers. Initially I suppose the concept of the movie reminded me of two things the anime series Sword Art Online and Frank Michels’s 2008 movie The Controller. Even though it’s live action The Call Up is not even in the same league of SAO and is only slightly better than The Controller because it seems that Charles Barker had enough of a production budget that it didn’t lock him into using “Game Play Footage” that looked like it was plucked from 1996 like Frank Michels seemed to have been.
I was completely unfamiliar with the entire cast of this ‘movie’ and hope that they go on to have thriving careers as film extras and to Charles as somebody who watches more movies then he cares to admit to, I humbly suggest that should you find a film studio foolish enough to green light your next project that you offer up a better ending then the one you did with your ‘movie’. In retrospect keeping my money and not buying The Call Up and having a 90 minute nap in the afternoon would have been a far better use of my time and resources.