Next Caller
2008 · 17m · USA
Directed by Patrick Rea
Tones: contemplative, dark, tense
A late-night radio DJ begins receiving calls from someone — or something — that shouldn't be able to use a phone. A slow-burn supernatural thriller set entirely in a radio booth.
Picked by Felix
The scouts
Radio DJ, late night, phone call from something wrong. The format is a genre unto itself — late-night radio as liminal space where reality gets negotiable. Patrick Rea understood this in 2008. Pontypool got the bigger audience; this one got here first.
Late-night radio booth as closed-box supernatural container — the horror arrives through the phone like a signal from somewhere it shouldn't come from. Pontypool's cousin, smaller scale.
Patrick Rea using a radio call-in show as a closed-box supernatural vector — the horror arriving through the phone line. Modest production, but the format-as-mechanism instinct is sound.