The Calling

(2014) ★★★

Sky Movies Premiere: PREMIERE Friday 26 June, 1.45pm and 9.45pm

The police department in the rural Ontario township of Fort Dundas relies on Susan Sarandon, a detective dependent on prescription drugs (they don’t need to be her own). Her chronic back pain means she sleeps on the floor. Her coffee is topped up from a hipflask. She isn’t Fargo’s loveable pregnant police chief Marge Gunderson. She’s a grouch and her mood is darkened by a spate of gruesome killings in the quiet farming community. Surgical butcherings that, according to local priest Donald Sutherland, smack of early Christian mysticism. These murders involve prayers of sacrifice and resurrection. And we know the killer’s identity. The man preying on the faithful is softly spoken herbalist Christopher Heyerdahl, who has the piercing blue eyes, gentle demeanour and beatific expression of Max von Sydow’s Christ in The Greatest Story Ever Told. This oddly intriguing thriller isn’t the greatest story ever told but its stately pace and reflective mood – reminiscent of Ed Gass-Donnelly’s haunting Small Town Murder Songs – is preferable to the hysterical melodrama of (the supposedly true) Deliver Us From Evil. And when it comes to ruminating clerics, Sutherland has previous Catholic convictions: he was the lead in Fred Walton’s underrated thriller The Rosary Murders back in 1987.

Certificate: 15
Duration: 104min