Incoming Call
2016 · 11m · Northern Ireland
Directed by Eoin Cleland
Tones: contemplative, tense
A nervous young woman about to perform at an open mic night starts receiving calls from her future self warning her about decisions to come, only to discover that incomplete knowledge of the future can be more dangerous than helpful.
Picked by Zoe
The scouts
The temporal paradox angle promises subversion, but the film plays it mostly straight—a phone call thriller that's too tethered to its own logic puzzle to actually break anything. It's clever enough to get you nodding, not bold enough to make you uncomfortable.
A formally restrained piece that trusts real-time dialogue and the telephone as both narrative device and formal constraint; the lineage here runs through experimental radio drama and Hitchcockian single-location tension, executed with evident precision.
The entire film hinges on Cleland's choice to compress the paradox into a single unbroken conversation—no cutaways, no visual trickery—and that formal discipline is what transforms a high-concept premise into something that actually lands in your chest.
Reviews
This film keenly distills and scales that down to microcosm level of a single person and the matter of picking up the phone.
Nervous Kerri is about to go on stage to make her debut at an open mike night, when her phone rings. It's her future self, telling her to leave before she gets on stage.
Festivals
- Belfast Film Festival 2016, Best Film