CRISIS HOTLINE / CERT: TBC / DIRECTOR & SCREENPLAY: MARK SCHWAB / STARRING: PANO TSAKLAS, COREY JACKSON, CHRISTIAN GABRIEL, AUGUST BROWNING / RELEASE DATE: OUT NOW
The premise of Crisis Hotline (aka Shadows in Mind) may not be that original, but there’s still mileage in a well-used idea when filmmakers apply a fresh spin to a familiar set-up. However, this is one of those cases where doing something different does not automatically equate to producing something particularly worthwhile.
Simon is taking the night shift as a volunteer counsellor on an LGBT phone line set up to help callers in crisis. After the usual slew of routine call-ins, he is taken aback to answer the phone to Danny – a young man who confides his intention to take not only his own life but the lives of three others who have wronged him. As Simon attempts to build a rapport with his caller, and lines up intervention services, Danny reveals the backstory that has led him to this pivotal night.
The film then unfolds through a series of flashbacks which fill in Danny’s story as a shy young man drawn to the dark fringes of excess, voyeurism, pornography, profiteering and drug taking in the city’s elite cosmopolitan gay scene (although, for all of its adult subject matter, this material is presented with PG levels of restraint).
Cinematically, Crisis Hotline is static and stilted. At times you’ll wonder if the Director of Photography nailed their camera to the floor to prevent the risk of unintended movement. Structurally, the continual switchbacks between the present and Danny’s narration of the past never really ratchet up the tension. The pacing is frequently off and, while the director might (in a stylistic homage) be aiming for the ambience of the opening scenes of a production-line porno, the end result is lit, staged and framed like a studio-bound soap opera, complete with an underpowered soundscape.
Aside from selfless Simon and his co-workers, most of the characters who populate the drama are selfish and self-regarding. It’s difficult to care about the fate of any of them, and it’s not obvious who, if anyone, writer Schwab intends the audience should be rooting for.
Films set in an LGBT context should, it goes without saying, be able to explore the full gamut of life-experience, reflecting on the best and the worst of human nature in a way that acknowledges the decency and the cruelty that every individual and social group is capable of. But it is notable that the key gay characters in this film are connected to substance abuse, drug dealing, violent pornography, abduction, internet crime and serious sexual assault. It’s only the efforts of the phone line volunteers, and the misplaced naïveté of the love-struck Danny, that are the source of any light or warmth.
While the plot is framed around the threat of retribution and vengeance which Danny is pledging to see through against those who have wronged him, events transpire somewhat differently and the morality of the comeuppance suffered by the offenders is murky.
Crisis Hotline has a consistent atmosphere and tone, a clear narrative drive and a bleak, tough sensibility from which the film never flinches. It offers an unusual take on some familiar genre beats and it retains the courage of its makers’ convictions. The fact that it’s an uncomfortable and unsettling watch is a combination of the distressing subject matter and the flat execution of a script in which empathy, compassion and human dignity are pushed to the fringes. While this might appeal to fans of nihilistic cinema, this is definitely not a movie for date night.
