DON'T HANG UP (2016)

Studio:       Lionsgate
Director:    Alexis Wajsbrot, Damien Mace
Writer:       Joe Johnson
Producer:  Romain Philippe, Olivier Philippe, Jason Newmark, Laurie Cook, Farah Abushwesha, Alexis Wajsbrot, Damien Mace
Stars:     Gregg Sulkin, Garrett Clayton, Bella Dayne, Sienna Guillory

Review Score:

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Summary:

Two teenage pranksters have the tables turned on them when a mysterious phone call spirals into a night of terror.

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Synopsis:     Show/Hide Spoilers

Teenage pranksters Brady Mannion, Sam Fuller, Mosley, and Roy, a.k.a. “PrankMonkey69,” successfully convince Mrs. Kolbein that an intruder is in her house and her daughter is in danger. The video of the prank phone call goes viral and the boys become YouTube famous.

Sam is upset over trouble with his girlfriend Peyton. With Sam home alone for the weekend, Brady comes over and the two of them make more prank phone calls. One of their pranks involves ordering a pizza for Sam’s neighbor Larry. Mosley, who delivers the pizza from the shop where he works with Peyton, becomes upset with his friends for involving him in the prank.

A man who identifies himself only as Mr. Lee begins repeatedly calling the boys, insisting that they do not hang up on him. Sam and Brady are initially dismissive until Mr. Lee reveals that he knows their names, addresses, and intimate details of their lives.

Peyton delivers a pizza that Sam and Brady did not order. Peyton reveals that Mosley disappeared after making his earlier delivery. Sam and Peyton have an uncomfortable conversation about their relationship before Peyton leaves.

Mr. Lee begins texting Sam and Brady in addition to calling. Video footage he sends them reveals that Mr. Lee is holding Brady’s parents prisoner at the Mannion residence. Mr. Lee prevents the boys from calling 911 by hijacking their cellphone lines. He also takes control of the house’s electrical power.

A video feed shows masked Mr. Lee suffocating Roy to death with a plastic bag tied around his head. Sam finds Mosley similarly bound with a plastic bag and tied to the backdoor. Mosley dies soon after Sam cuts him loose. While Sam is occupied, Mr. Lee makes Brady an offer to kill Sam in exchange for releasing Brady’s parents.

Mr. Lee sends footage showing that he captured Peyton. Sam deduces that Brady had a private conversation with Mr. Lee, leading to a physical fight between the two of them. Brady is knocked unconscious.

Mr. Lee shows Sam live footage of Peyton held prisoner. He promises to let Peyton go if Sam kills Brady. Sam restrains Brady by securing his wrist to the banister with a zip tie to prevent him from leaving.

A clue of a child’s image and the name Izzy leads Sam to check a previously ignored social media friend request. The Izzy account reveals that Mr. Lee had been stalking the pranksters for over a year. Sam also finds a sex video revealing that Brady had been sleeping with Peyton. Sam beats Brady.

Sam notices from a clock in the background that the video of Brady’s parents is two hours behind the current time. Sam frees Brady. New video shows that Mr. Lee already killed Brady’s parents.

Assuming that Peyton is probably dead too, the boys plan to escape and contact authorities. However, once Sam is outside, Brady locks the front door and remains behind.

Sam finds a surveillance van outside in the rain. Inside the van, Sam finds Peyton and rescues her.

Back in the house, Brady steps over Mosley’s covered body to go out the backdoor. In the backyard, Brady finds Mosley’s body. Brady realizes that Mr. Lee switched places with Mosley and hid in the house. Mr. Lee catches Brady off guard and attacks.

Sam has Peyton go for help while he looks for Brady. Sam follows Peyton’s screams to the backyard. A masked man suddenly lunges at Sam and Sam stabs him. The man turns out to be Brady, tied up and gagged to look like Mr. Lee in a mask so that Sam would kill him by mistake.

With Sam and Peyton defeated, Mr. Lee explains his identity. When the fours boys previously called Mrs. Kolbein, she dropped her phone and did not hear the revelation that she had been pranked. Still convinced there was an intruder in the home, Mrs. Kolbein recovered a gun and accidentally shot her daughter Izzy. Upon realizing what she had done, Mrs. Kolbein killed herself. Mr. Lee was the husband/father.

Mr. Lee knocks Sam unconscious. When Sam wakes, he finds Peyton shot in the head. Holding a knife in one hand and a gun in the other, Sam is arrested by cops arriving at the scene. Mr. Lee successfully framed Sam for killing Peyton and Brady as jealous revenge, as well as being responsible for the other murders.

In an epilogue, Mr. Lee begins targeting a new teen prankster.

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Review:

You know those challenges on reality TV competitions where a contestant starts from an idea requiring less creativity and seemingly less effort than his/her counterparts?  The kind of concept so dangerously simple in approach, it appears certainly doomed for disapproval by the judges?  The mere act of even proposing the project inspires a Glenn Hetrick or a Gordon Ramsay to arch his eyebrows and cock his head with the highly skeptical warning, “ok, but if you’re going to be this basic, you’d better hope you’re perfect.”

That’s the dare accepted by “Don’t Hang Up.”  The premise isn’t particularly fresh.  The twists aren’t exactly inventive.  The movie isn’t aggressive about being bold.  As “madman tormenting teenagers” thrillers go, “Don’t Hang Up” follows formula to the letter, making it the filmic equivalent of a zombie makeup on “Face Off” or a white rice risotto on “MasterChef.”

The thing is, everything is executed so slickly and so well, familiar flavor doesn’t matter.  “Don’t Hang Up” inauspiciously steps up to the plate in a plain pinstripe uniform, sizes up a straightforward swing, and then smashes a screaming shot of strong suspense right over the wall.

Best buds Brady and Sam are privileged jackasses.  They wag tongues at women, scoff at strangers with insulting put-downs, and misbehave like insufferable a-holes.  You’ll roll eyes exactly as expected, though Garrett Clayton in particular is so infectiously immature as Brady, a strange charisma is crafted, keeping the duo from being totally intolerable.

Likable isn’t the right descriptor.  Neither is charming.  Brady is crude, callous, and selfish.  Yet it’s difficult to fully despise him because the appealing absurdity of his rudeness is amusing as a fictional caricature.  For a movie built on a pair of buffoonish “bros” as central figures, their obnoxiousness is nowhere near as off-putting as it could/should be.

Brady and Sam are part of a four-person collective captained by Roy, aka “Prankmonkey69” if you needed additional evidence of their douchebaggery.  The quartet recently became YouTube famous after a prank phone call successfully convinced a frightened mother that she and her daughter were in fatal danger from a home intruder.  That video went viral and the boys have been going hard at the Jerky Boys game ever since.

Home alone for the weekend, Sam is distressed over trouble in Camelot with his girlfriend Peyton.  Brady’s idea for a cheer-up session involves pizza, beer, and more prank phone calls to let those who dare answer know what small genitalia they have.

Not long into the night, Brady and Sam unexpectedly end up on the receiving end for a change, and this dose of their own medicine does not taste good.  Someone doesn’t find their antics as harmlessly hilarious as they do, so it is time to turn the tables.  Brady and Sam are initially dismissive of this unknown caller.  But when mysterious “Mr. Lee” reveals names, numbers, and intimate details of the boys’ personal lives, the flustered friends realize this is not a random act of nonsense.  Mr. Lee has a very sharp ax to grind, and his pernicious plan is just getting started.

“Don’t Hang Up” makes no attempt to hide its influences, e.g. “Scream” and “I Know What You Did Last Summer,” though it tethers itself to 1990s touchstones without being overly on the nose about it.  A side effect is that the screenplay bothers itself with derivative developments including backstabbing bullsh*t and a “surprise” setup concerning a masked attacker that absolutely everyone will see coming ahead of schedule.  But even when “Don’t Hang Up” is predictable, it is still entertaining.

“Don’t Hang Up” features the kind of horror movie adversary with a scheme so convolutedly complicated, it comes complete with convenient contingencies requiring events to play out precisely as anticipated.  Alfred Hitchcock would have a coronary over the excessive employment of “refrigerator logic” glossing over how improbable, and unnecessary, it would be to pull off a plan of such proportions.  At the same time, Hitchcock might award a thumbs up for rendering the disbelief unimportant through unrelenting cinematic style.

Deep backgrounds in visual effects have granted co-directors Alexis Wajsbrot and Damien Mace deep knowledge about how to fill a frame with energetic imagery, even when scenes are set to simmer with subtlety.  In addition to a strong sense of placement, Wajsbrot and Mace squeeze a great deal of smoothness from their fluid camera by keeping it moving, circumventing the stuffiness that can come from using a single, insular location for almost the entirety of the runtime.  No matter what is on the screen, the sincerity in the technical approach ensures nothing is ever boring.

Given that both films involve social media-motivated terror and a bullying-gone-wrong via text and video framing device, a close comparative cousin is “Unfriended” (review here).  Where that movie’s teenage tone had limited appeal, “Don’t Hang Up” succeeds through engaging acting compensating for clichéd characterizations and effective atmosphere elevating suspense.  Turn the lights low, turn the sound up, turn a cheek at the tropes, and “Don’t Hang Up” does not disappoint as a tense chiller that does it by the book, but does it right all the way.

Review Score:  80

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