The Calling (Spoiler alert!)

The plot looked novel enough – an elderly woman is murdered in her own home in a small Canadian town. There is no sign of a forced entry but her face is frozen as if she is trying to say something. Postmortem reveals that the face is made to look like that by the killer. The task of solving this case falls to the town’s aging police officer, who is battling her own demons of depression and ill-health. One murder follows another and she starts wondering if there is a serial killer involved.

Like I said before, the plot looked novel enough – till the creepy looking priest drove up in an Oldsmobile. From there on, there was not much doubt as to who the murderer is. The only puzzling thing was the motive. And I feel that was not adequately explained – at least not to the extent that the movie’s non-Christians audience would understand it. E.g. how can the prayer which worked for Christ be expected to work for mere mortals?

Apart from that there were other unexplained story threads. How the powder that brought about the end of the elderly was able to cure the sick child? Why did the priest set the faces of the dead? What was the story behind the cop’s suicide attempt?

If you don’t mind watching a thriller that leaves a couple of unanswered questions in the end, then this movie is for you. It doesn’t show a dead body every 15 minutes or so and appears to run in show motion at times but certainly manages to keep you engrossed.