Call from the Past

Don't Let Go (2019) is almost one of those small indie SF/Fantasy films, except it has more of a studio gloss. I attribute this to Jason Blum and Blumhouse producing. 

It stars David Oyelowo as an LA policeman and Storm Reid (Wrinkle In Time) as his niece. It is established that her father, his brother, Bryan Tyree Henry, is a bit of a fuck up. One day he gets a garbled call from Reid and rushes to her house. He finds her, her dog, and her mother and father, all dead, with a box of coke under the bed.

The police decide it's murder-suicide, ans Oyelowo goes along. Then he gets another call from Reid. She doesn't get why he is freaking out about it, and he finally figures out that she is calling from the past - a few days before she is murdered. He gets her to do something in the past (stick something under a diner table with a piece of gum) and finds it in his present. So he knows she can change her future.

So we get one little SF gimmick, and a lot of human relationships, the way those little indie films do (I'm talking about, for ex, Fast Color or Kin). The movie also has some pacing problems and some silliness, as Oyelowo, increasingly haggard and wounded, keeps forcing his way into the evidence locker while his boss, Alfred Molina, just lets him. But Blumhouse makes it all seem a little more like a regular movie. I wonder if I would have like it better with a little less polish. Not that Blumhouse is exactly slick, but they do get a solid look for cheap.

So now I want to watch the Denzel Washington time-travel movie Deja Vu. But of course Netflix doesn't have it available without a Long Wait.