Night Call (2024) Review: Michiel Blanchart’s Debut Feature is a Reasonably Gripping Single-Night Thriller

Michiel Blanchart’s debut feature Night Call (originally titled La nuit se traîne in France) sees the Belgian writer-director explore the familiar single-night premise. The kind where the character(s) is caught in a dire situation over the course of a night. We have seen these types of movies popping up now and then for decades from the likes of Assault on Precinct 13 (1976) to After Hours (1985), Judgment Night (1993) and PTU (2003).

So, here we have one young black man named Mady (Jonathan Feltre) who is about to suffer the biggest nightmare of his life. He works as a night locksmith who is good at what he does. We learn a bit about him: He’s still studying and being a locksmith is just a gig. He loves to listen to oldies, specifically Petula Clark’s “La nuit n’en finit plus”.

But tonight isn’t his lucky night after a young female customer named Claire (Natacha Krief) hires him to help unlock the door of her flat. Except she can’t pay him upfront because she left her purse inside. She can’t even show him her ID because, well, it’s inside the flat too. A little flirting here and there later, Mady finally gives in and helps her anyway. Everything’s fine at first until Claire tells him to wait inside while she’s taking out the trash and go to the ATM to pay him later.

Trouble starts when Claire calls Mady, telling him to leave the flat in a hurry. What follows next is an ugly encounter with a man that gets worse as the night wears on. Soon, he deals with a no-nonsense mobster named Yannick (Romain Duris), who keeps pressuring Mady about the missing money. The latter insists he doesn’t know anything about it and tells him he’s just a locksmith getting a call from a girl named Claire to unlock the front door of her flat. Yannick hates liars and has a tough time believing him, which at one point, he tortures him using duct tape without hesitation.

Credits go to Blanchart for keeping the pace taut while wasting little time getting to the point, especially during the earlier part of the movie. It helps that Jonathan Feltre excels as an engaging protagonist that we can relate to his ordeal. He is just an ordinary young man making a living and keeps a low profile even with the ongoing Black Lives Matter protest that rocks the city of Belgium. And yet, he is trapped in forced circumstances that he has to rely on his wits and survival instinct to stay alive.

I’m glad that Blanchart doesn’t portray him as an indestructible hero of sorts, making his character believable even with the occasional suspension of disbelief that happens throughout the movie. Romain Duris, in the meantime, delivers strong support as a sadistic antagonist who particularly has his way of torturing a person. Blanchart knows well how to stage thrilling action set pieces (the climactic car chase comes to mind) in a crisp shooting style with none of the annoying jittery camerawork or herky-jerky editing.

Sylvestre Vannoorenberghe’s atmospheric nighttime cinematography equally deserves praise that successfully capturing the tense scenario set in the city backdrop of mass demonstration and public chaos. As much as I enjoy Night Call, the movie tends to suffer from patchy and loose storytelling including the final third act which feels strangely incomplete.

Still, despite the shortcomings, Michiel Blanchart remains an up-and-coming director to watch. Sam Raimi and TriStar Pictures had even acquired the rights to Blanchart’s 2021 short You’re Dead Hélène (T’es morte Hélène) to be remade as an American adaptation long before his debut feature was released.