The Call Up (2016)
When a group of elite online gamers each receive a mysterious invitation to trial a state-of-the-art virtual reality video game, it’s a dream come true and impossible to resist. Arriving at the test site, the group step into hi-tech gear and prepare for a revolutionary, next-level gaming experience that brings modern warfare to life with frightening realism. At first it’s a unique and exhilarating experience. But what starts out like a dream encounter with cutting edge technology quickly takes a turn for the sinister. Once the group are attacked by enemy combatants, they soon realize this is no game after all. Make a mistake here and you pay with your life. Now these masters of the shoot ‘em up will have to fight for survival within a game gone bad, but this time it’s for real.
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Just so...so bad
I saw this movie before reading any reviews, and I thought it was very funny. I was very surprised to see the overwhelmingly negative reviews this film received from critics.
I think this is a new genre that they're all sort of working their way through it and haven't got all the kinks worked out yet but it's a genre that works for me.
If you're interested in the topic at hand, you should just watch it and judge yourself because the reviews have gone very biased by people that didn't even watch it and just hate (or love) the creator. I liked it, it was well written, narrated, and directed and it was about a topic that interests me.
For those of you who couldn't get enough of "Gamer" or "Stay Alive" we have this modest production. A group of the world's top gamers who happen to be loners are offered a $100,000 prize to compete. They don special suits. They enter a 3D graphic world where they find weapons and must work their way down through 25 levels to get to the basement battling armed terrorists. When you die in cyberspace, the suit kills you. Attempts to escape or circumnavigate the rules are severely punished.It was a good concept and the plot elements and scenery was decent. The characters were diverse but not entertaining. Where was that one character we hated to see die? We need to get attached to the characters before they start to slaughter them. And plot spoiler, the black guy dies first, like in every cliché American horror film. How much would it have cost to have Jim Parsons to do a cameo as the game designer or the computer voice? Guide: F-word. No sex or nudity.
Don't listen to the it-wasn't-that-bad reviews. It was. Acting-poor...expected. Storyline-overmined...expected. CGI-decent- expected. But even though it meets expectations, that's not saying much when expectations are low. There's just no reason to waste 90 mins of your life watching this...in a week, you'll have forgotten everything except, maybe, the fact that you watched it. It's racing out of my short term into oblivion as I type. Hard pass.
Some of the people writing reviews obviously didn't understand the film. It's definitely not a bad film, although it was a bit cliché in some areas.***SPOILER ALERT***A group of various gamers have volunteered for a chance to win $100,000. They first arrive not knowing what to expect. They are given special suits and begin a VR simulation. They eventually discover that if you die in the game, you die in real life.***ENDING SPOILER***One of the gamers is a routine player (rich upper class) who gets his/her sick thrills from playing and winning.
Well shot and composed with good colors and contrast. Appropriate solid special effects and motion graphics, not over the top at all. Yes these are aesthetic observations but aesthetics are important, especially in Sci-Fi. They're also the only good thing I can say about the movie.Horrible acting and a horrible script. I don't know whats worse, the script or the casting. The stereotypes are also poorly written. For stereotypes. All the building blocks were there for something more coherent and edgy. A tighter script with some better casting could have turned this into a cult classic.The missed opportunity is highlighted even more by the solid production work. Unfortunate.