Close Calls is the first full-length feature from Richard Stringham- who wrote, directed and produced the film. And it’s a love letter to various horror genres- all blended into create a mostly appealing & pacy modern horror film, that very much nods to the past- but manages to create something of its own.
 
The film centers around very well proportioned teen Morgan Mackenzie( Jordan Phipps)- who has had her phone & tech taking away from her by her father, after he finds Morgan pleasing her boyfriend in the families hot tab. Her father is going out for with his girlfriend for the night leaving Morgan, alone except for her bed-bound grandmother on the top floor of the house. The premise is fairly standard- but Stringham manages to add all manner of different genre twists to film so you are kept held interested, even through the film slides in at a lengthy two hours and eight-minute runtime.
 
Soon after her father departs for the evening, Morgan cracks out her box of drugs, and starts snorting & smoking up. Then of course what is real & what is not starts to blend, we get a very Suspiria/ trippy Gallio like walk up to grannies room, dirty phone call on the landline ala Black Christmas-and  throughout this Mogan is wandering around the house in just her underwear, with often lingering shots of her large assets. As the film goes on things of course develop, start to twist & turn- but I won’t detail much more- as you need to step into this fairly blind.
 
The small cast is largely good/great- Phipps managers to portray the drug-taking, promiscuous, through on edge teen well, sure she spends much of the film half-dressed but she certainly has acting talent, and is not just leering eye candy. Kristoff Waltmire is good as her concerned father, with great supporting roles from Greg Fallon as her father’s sleazy college. Where a issue sadly comes on the acting side of things is US actress Carmen Patterson as Morgan’s fathers girlfriend- she attempts to (very badly) do an upper-class English accent; which goes above & beyond ham into grating- added to this her general acting chops move between overdone-to- unconvincing. I hate calling out a certain actor in a film, but Ms. Patterson is truly awful, and  at times it almost threw the film- but thankfully it never quite does.
 
The film has a neat and effective score by Rocky Gray - this is sort of a blend of the bass bound and brooding synth scaping of Carpenter, the elegant & creepily keyboard/ piano work of Goblin and Fabio Frizzi, with touches of pulsing Tangerine Dream & moments of more abstract dread.

As the film moves on, we get more threat/ gore appearing, and both of these are done in a  well & believable fashion-though much of the film's early part is about creating an atmosphere- which nicely blends creepy home-alone vibe with 1970's trippy thriller/horror. For the most part, aside from the one issue I mentioned early, Close Calls stands as one of the more engrossing, tense & effective horror thrillers in recent memory.
 
The only extra on the DVD is commentary from writer, director, producer Richard Stringham. The track is most worthy, as he goes from discussing the scripts origins and it influences going from other filmmakers, to the psychedelic mushroom he was taking while writing it. He moves onto discussing locations, actor choices & how they were selected, before going onto talk about the great soundtrack, and the feedback he’s got from the audience on the film. Stringham has a very down-to-earth almost Seth Rogan like persona, and his passion for both horror cinema & making the best film possible are clear from the track- so it’s worth giving this a play. In the track he mentions Red Phone Diaries- which after searching on the net is a two-plus hour doc about the films making- oddly this was meant to have been an extra on releases of the film, but is most certainly missing from the copy we got sent- a real pity, as it would have been great to find out more about the film's production, etc.
 
 
If like me, you’ve become more than a little jaded with modern horror; I think you should give Close Calls a go. Sure it uses horror traits & genre touches from the past be it Giallo, trippy horror, and home alone elements- but these are used in a well & balanced manner, so it never drifts into either arty post-modern Giallo, or ’70s/ 80’s horror parody- there is story, tension, and effective twists through-out. I’m really looking forward to seeing what writer/director Richard Stringham does for his next feature.