Private Number (2014) Reviews

• Really good

  atinder2015-05-04

  A series of cryptic phone messages and visions haunt a writer while he struggles to finish a novel. As they increase in intensity, he loses his grip on reality, eventually obsessing this movie didn't not take long to get going and it flowed really well , movie felt really fast pace , There was good scene in this movie , that I really enjoyed and thought there they were a tad creepy I liked how the plot came to an end , I enjoyed turn in story but it did cross mind in the part of the movie, that he might lead that way. I thought acting was very decent from the cast 7 out of 10 really good movie

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• A writer and his wife lose their grip on sanity when an inscrutable stalker gaslights them with bizarre, late night phone calls.

  pameladegraff2015-06-03

  In this nervous, edgy chiller, TV thespians Hal Ozsan (True Blood) and Nicholle Tom (Gotham, Stalker and the 1990's The Nanny) play Michael and Mary Lane, a yuppie couple in a strained relationship. He's an aspiring writer and she's supporting him. Mary is losing her patience for dealing with Michael's increasingly temperamental artist's personality while Michael, a recently reformed alcoholic, struggles with writer's block. Ordinarily bemused and good-natured when confronted by frustration, Michael's psyche swerves for the worse amid numerous domestic challenges. The situation turns grim when annoying nocturnal hang-up calls complicate Michael and Mary's swelling marital tension. The calls evolve from apparent pranks into aggressive harassment. One or more disembodied, mostly unintelligible female voices abstrusely mumbles occultist nonsense before concluding with a provocative, "Remember me?" The source of the calls can't be determined. The caller ID displays only the elusive words, "PRIVATE NUMBER." Fortunately for Michael, Mary hears the calls too -they're not just the product of her stressed husband's imagination. After consulting with the authorities, the couple is nevertheless ready to write off the messages for being the work of a jokester -until unplugging the telephone fails to stop it from ringing. Circumstances rapidly disintegrate. Mary and Michael descend into an indeterminate and surreal state dominated by ever more abnormal occurrences. The obfuscating presence of silhouetted intruders in their home may or may not be real. Are Michael and Mary suffering a joint delusional breakdown, or are they experiencing supernatural visions? Neither they nor we can be sure, as the duo waivers, then loses their tenuous balance on the threshold between reality and fantasy. Private Number is a nocturnal horror story -most of the action occurs at night within the cloistered, cerulean confines of Mike and Mary's suburban home. False resolutions turn out to be merely dreams. As the edge separating the firmament of certainty from the abyss of bedlam blurs, we're reminded of Irene Trent's (Barbara Stanwyck) ordeal in William Castle's The Night Walker (1964); unable to escape from a perpetual nightmare, she screams over and over, "I can't wake-up!" Judd Nelson has a role as the local sheriff who inexplicably throws obstacles to the investigation. With The Breakfast Club thirty years distant, a matured Nelson has become ingratiatingly credible in darker roles. He exudes that peculiar Rob Lowe/Robert Downey Jr. screen aura which suggests his character is at best questionable, likely untrustworthy, and certainly sleazy. Tom Sizemore, looking surprisingly fit after spending several years bloated from too many good times, plays Michael's convincingly weathered ex-alcoholic and ex- drug addicted sobriety counselor. It's not a huge stretch for Sizemore, but his portrayal of a character with depth indicates that Sizemore possesses greater theatrical range than he was permitted to exhibit in his many tough guy roles. Private Number's most commanding performances come from relative newcomers to the big screen, television actors Nicholle Tom and Hal Ozsan as Mary and Michael. Tom is well-cast and Ozsan displays commendable versatility when Michael undergoes a dramatic personality shift. Since it's mentioned early on that Michael suffered a debilitating accident just after meeting Mary, that fact, along with his former alcoholism makes us wonder if Michael had a drunk-driving accident and a victim is the phone-phreaking culprit. When a sleuthing Michael resorts to journalistic instinct to dissect the eerie enigma, we discover ever more likely suspects. Foreshadowing may enable you to deduce who the monster is, yet as Private Number side-winds its serpentine way through Michael and Mary's hallucinatory conundrum, the fun is in the journey. There's no shortage of horror movies about authors going crazy and summoning up the occult world. Notable examples include The Dark Half (1993) and In The Mouth of Madness (1994). Despite superficial similarities to The Shining and the 2012 movie, Sinister, Private Number manages to be new and different. The film's plot is uncanny and engrossing. It's effective because writer/director LazRael Lison's unconventional mix of cross-genre story elements makes Private Number an unusual viewing experience. Private Number's offbeat combination of literary conventions shoves viewers off balance and keeps us guessing. The result may confuse and fail to satisfy those who yearn for traditional structure. Yet while Private Number doesn't strive to be an arty movie or to perplex us with an ambiguous open ending, its ambitious weaving of varying cinematic tropes combined with its unsettling, counter-intuitive conclusion will charm fans of those kinds of films.

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• Leading lady plays it right

  ckanadianckillercklownckollege2019-04-20

  Always enjoy films with a stunning leading lady and this one delivers. The guy who portrays the husband plays the part of an idiotic wanker, who takes out his inadequacies on his beautiful wife, who if smarter would have given him right to the balls before dumping him.

• REMEMBER ME?

  nogodnomasters2018-11-22

  Michael Lane (Hal Ozsan) has obtained some small success with his novel "Knight Fire." He is having trouble writing the sequel or whatever it is he is writing. His wife Kathy (Nicholle Tom) is opening a boutique because it is California and that is what they do. Michael is one year sober but still maintains a bottle of Jack Daniels in the house, one that seems to call to him. About 10 minutes into the film, Michael begins having hallucinations and the phone starts to ring early in the morning with various voices saying, "Remember me?" Yes the film starts out very good. We manage to have a plot and subplot within the same person. The phone calls smartly evolve into a Twilight Zone episode. When the plot reveals its mystery, it is anti-climatic and a let down after weaving such an interesting tale. Guide: F-bomb. Sex. No nudity.

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• As if made by two production units

  Wizard-82017-01-29

  As I've said before, I like taking a chance on low budget independent genre movies, because you can find some real gems out there. However, you can also find some examples that aren't very good at all, and "Private Number" is unfortunately one such example. As I said in my summary line, the movie feels like it was made by two units, each working on one half of the movie - and not successfully. The first half of the movie is simply the central character going through one hellish experience after another with absolutely no progression in the plot at all. In the second half, the plot does start to progress, but often in a really confusing manner; it often feels like linking footage and vital explanations were cut out or simply not filmed at all. Toward the end of the movie, there is a major twist, but if you have seen your share of psychological thrillers, the twist probably won't be all that surprising. The acting is okay, I guess. And for what was a real low budget, the movie looks fairly decent (except for the cheesy "fire" sequence). But the story is such a mess that I suspect most viewers will stop watching before the first half of the movie has totally passed. And the remaining viewers who stick it out to the end will probably not find the resolution worth it.

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