I Am The Resurrection And The Life-Susan Sarandon’s The Calling

 

 

DVD Review

 

From The Pen Of Frank Jackman

 

The Calling, starring Susan Sarandon, Donald Sutherland, 2014

 

From the vast number of crime novels and films like the film under review, The Calling, centered on serial killers you would think that (1) this wicked old world is a much more misogynous place that it really is and, (2) that it would be hard to come up with a new plotline to provide a rationale for the killer’s motives and for the inevitable hand of law enforcement (after some scares of course) to bring the miscreant to justice (or at least out of harm’s way, ours). So what the makers of this film have done is to go back that old tried and true plot producer, the Bible, to grab odd-ball motivation.

 

Here’s how it plays out. A Podunk town pill-popping, too many pill-poppings if anybody is asking, chief police officer (played by Susan Sarandon), this time said Podunk town being in Canada just to show that serial killers know no borders when they get their blood lusts up, or whatever drives them to homicidal impulses, finds a body of a town resident gruesomely and apparently randomly murdered. Random until other murders showing some of the same kinds of patterns keep popping up in the area and beyond. After much investigation the pattern becomes clear-the killings are related and the killer whether, as the psychological profiles for serial killers go, is looking to be caught or not, has a message that he (or she) wants an indifferent world to hear about. Wants the world to feel his (or her) pain. As it turns out from the clues this killer has some religious motivation, big time religious motivation taking on the concept of the Christian version of resurrection.

 

Of course if you are in Canada trying to solve what looks like some archaic ritual religious murders (or anywhere else for that matter) then checking into some clerical expertise makes sense. So the good chief checks in with a bible scholar (played by Donald Sutherland) who spins a tale about lost off-the-wall ancient sects who believed that a series of signs could bring the dead back, or rather one dead person back-replicating the Christian experience-a version of the second coming. Like I said the good priest spins a nice tale because he is into the whole scheme up to his eyeballs. Seems that one of his old-time orphanage charges is out to avenge his brother’s suicide committed in adulthood after having been farmed out as a child to some sexual pervert and is using the biblical playbook provide by the good priest to bring him back.

 

Not going to happen right, no way but as the plot thickened things looked very dicey. The serial killer does come very close but no the dear chief will survive to grab a fistful of pills and some well-deserved kudos another day. Like I say times are tough finding new plotlines for fictional serial killers. This one only worked so-so.