2025 Popcorn Frights Film Festival Coverage
Don’t Hang Up review
A Screenlife haunted house movie. The gimmick works…but the characters don’t.
Festival movie reviews will not contain spoilers.
Don’t Hang Up
Directed by Alex Herron
Written by Alex Herron
Starring Claire McPartland, Siri Black Ndiaye and Jueun Kang
Don’t Hang Up Review
The only thing that I knew about Don’t Hang Up before watching it is that it was a found footage movie. That turned out to not even be the case…meaning that I knew nothing about Don’t Hang Up before watching it…and whoever wrote that it was a found footage movie doesn’t know what that means. Don’t Hang Up is more of a Screenlife movie. You may see that and say to yourself “what’s the difference” or “it’s the same thing, you idiot”. It’s really not. They share some similarities in execution…but a found footage movie involves…footage that was…found. What we’re watching is footage discovered after whatever event made it interesting. Screenlife plays out in real time. We don’t know what’s going to happen to these characters. No one collected their footage and deemed it of interest.
Other than that, they’re basically the same. I swear that I’m not just being a stickler for terminology here. The time the story we are watching takes place in matters more than the format we are watching it in. One is important to the narrative. The other is a stylistic choice usually selected to fit a budget. Found footage is the cheapest kind of movie to shoot. You don’t have to spend a lot of time lighting things…and the shots you capture aren’t supposed to look professional. Screenlife shares those similarities…but it can be harder to pull off. Sure, some Screenlife movies amount to five faces talking to the camera…but they also involve technical knowhow that found footage simply doesn’t have to deal with. Don’t Hang Up isn’t your typical Screenlife movie. In fact, two paragraphs into this, I’m not even sure if it is one.
Maybe it’s creating a new, third thing. The concept in Don’t Hang Up, you may be able to guess from the title, revolves around videochat on a smartphone. This isn’t a static webpage with talking heads bickering while the lights flicker. They’re doing something much more difficult. The way they tell the story is more like a found footage movie…with the phone replacing a camcorder…but there’s another person on the other end of that phone call. And…not to harp on something most people won’t think about…we aren’t watching a story that has concluded before we are watching it. To such a degree that a person experiencing the story in real time is able to comment on the footage as it is happening. It’s something a little different. The strange love child of found footage and Screenlife.
Don’t Hang Up is about three women staying at a haunted house. Summer (Claire McPartland), Vicky (Siri Black Ndiaye) and Eva (Jueun Kang) rented the house after attending a wedding in Tulsa. Summer’s boyfriend Chris (Brett Curtis) didn’t go with her…and spends Don’t Hang Up video chatting through a night full of paranormal spookiness. The girls don’t know that the place they’ve rented is haunted…though they acknowledge it’s a creepy looking place. Chris discovers that the house has been featured on a paranormal show…one of the cool things that can be done with an outside viewer commenting on the situation. It’s reminiscent of the clever ways that Deadstream told its story with a live chat running on the screen. This is a more immediate and personal reaction…but it’s another good example of innovating a tired format.
And here’s the most important thing…it works. At least early on…it works really well. Don’t Hang Up has a bit of Paranormal Activity going on in it. You know that something is going to happen at some point, somewhere on the screen. The fun is in checking all those dark corners, trying to get ahead of where it’s going to be. Chris can see behind Summer while they talk…and he catches on quicker than the trio that something weird is going on. There are effectively creepy moments in the first act of Don’t Hang Up. There are also a couple awesome physical attacks on poor, unsuspecting Eva. Some possession stuff…a lot of “look behind you” moments…shapes moving in the darkness…bright eyes peering back at the screen. It works. For a time.
The deeper that Don’t Hang Up gets into its story…the less effective it becomes. The problem begins when troublemaker Vicky disturbs a dusty old urn. She’s acting like any number of stupid characters that make horror movies work. It’s unacceptable behavior that we totally accept in the genre. But things get much, much worse. I don’t know if I’ve ever seen characters act dumber than Summer and Vicky do in Don’t Hang Up. Eva gets a pass due to possession and (probable) concussion.
Now that I think of it…there are also a couple of stupid paramedics who show up for two minutes. Literally. They tend to an unconscious Eva and immediately determine she’s fine. The girl whose head banged off a wall, smells of alcohol and is NOT CONSCIOUS…is fine. I wish we could have heard from them again when they returned like an hour after their diagnosis…but it happens off screen.
Anyway, Summer and Vicky make it so deep into the night that I was sure there would be a supernatural reason they never just…left…the…house. Chris is telling them to get out of there about five minutes into the call. They tell him he’s acting crazy. They’re the ones who have watched their friend get ragdolled by nothing, seen and heard things throughout the house, and (because of Chris’s POV) have eyes in the back of their head telling them something is behind them. And they decide to open another bottle of wine. This is after Eva has been taken away in an ambulance, by the way. It’s so frustrating that nothing can feel scary anymore. You’re on the ghosts side now. After like an hour of watching these women make the dumbest choices they can at every turn…let’s go ghosts.
There’s a reason this is all happening. It’s tied to their location. I honestly can’t tell you if it explains itself well or has an effective payoff. I was too busy rooting for these characters to die. What is interesting is that, in the end, Don’t Hang Up zigs where most movies zag. Instead of a climactic battle that ups the gore or effects…it opts for a much quieter ending. It makes sense given the story the film chooses for the haunting…but it was interesting, nonetheless. The scary stuff works less and less as the movie turns towards explaining itself…but they had to do something.
The best way I can describe Don’t Hang Up is by recounting a scene that happens about a half hour into the movie. Eva is chucked into a wall by an unseen…something. This happens right in front of Summer’s eyes. Chris tells her they have to get out of the house. She looks him right in the eyes and asks, without a hint of irony, “why?”. This would be repeated for the next 40 minutes or so. Eventually there is a paranormal reason that they are unable to leave. It comes so long after a rational person would have already done so that the whole thing just turns comical.
Scare Value
The concept behind Don’t Hang Up works better than I thought it would. You’ll be searching every dark corner for something to move…and it often, eventually does. There’s craft at work here that harkens back to the Paranormal Activity franchise. The problems start when the characters are in a position to make literally any decision ever. Even in a genre built on bad choices…Don’t Hang Up blows past the boundaries of acceptability.
