The Call Up Trailer (2016)

Trailer for The Call Up, starring Max Deacon, Morfydd Clark, Ali Cook and Christopher Obi.

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

The Call Up will be the feature debut for director Charles Barker, who is best known for helming commercials over in the U.K. Staying close to home, the film will be released to theaters in the U.K. a month before a theatrical release in the States.

The film had a small festival run, having been the close-out feature for the Sci-Fi London Film Festival, resulting in feedback that ranged from "flawed" to "unoriginal". Not the best "acclaim" any director would like with their first outing, but everybody seems to agree that in terms of visuals, a lot was accomplished considering the modest, aka ultra low, budget.

The number one role repeatedly listed on the film's credits is "terrorist".

I'm always entertained when I watch a trailer for a film that has already taken a beating from critics during earlier festival runs. The same holds true for The Call Up trailer. Even though the word on the street claims that this sci-fi actioner will be entirely dependent on gamers addicted to first person shooters, does the preview shown at least give its best effort? Let's see...

The trailer knows its audience, or at least the audience it wants. If I had seen this ten years ago you could have counted me in to catch this film opening weekend. During that time I was an avid Counter-Strike and Unreal Tournament gamer -- fun fact: I was ranked 3rd in the world for Unreal Mod Levels -- that required me putting in something near 50 hours every two weeks. That's 25 hours per week! Yep, it was insane, but I was in college, and gaming, drinking and getting laid was the limited run of my ambitions. This sort of movie would have been perfect for me.

But now I'm a bit more grown up, and realize that, while this trailer for The Call Up is really selling the cool premise, it completely shies away from any mention of actual plot -- as in, what the hell is going on? -- and limited dialogue. If I ever do get a craving for something such as this, I'll just go watch Gamer instead.