LIFELINE REVIEW
“A strong and powerful drama that’s better than many of the movies I saw at Sundance this year.”
On paper, the idea of a thriller set during a single night at a suicide hotline center might make people feel somewhat uncomfortable. Fortunately, Lifeline, directed by Feras Alfuqaha from a screenplay by Brady Morell and Brian Price, handles that setting and its material quite tastefully without going too hard on the genre elements, even though they’re definitely present.
Josh Stewart (The Collector) plays Steven Thomas, a family man who has the unenviable task of covering the last night shift at a call center on New Year’s Eve, when he receives a call from a troubled suicidal college-age kid with an identical name. Over the course of the night, Steven speaks with those that have known him for years as the mystery deepens about what might have happened to him that he doesn’t remember.
While a movie like this could be seen as fairly simple, mainly being a single actor in one location, it’s actually tougher, because you need to keep the viewer invested with what is essentially a dialogue-heavy film. The 2018 Danish thriller, The Guilty–which was subsequently remade by Antoine Fuqua with Jake as star–attempted such a thing to mixed results. Lifeline actually ends up working better as a concept, because what Steven is experiencing involves his own past, one that he mostly forgot but one that involves domestic abuse at the hands of his father. This would be a tough role for any actor, but Stewart gives such a strong performance.
The 2000 thriller Frequency had a similar concept of a man and his father talking across time over HAM radio, but Lifeline handles this idea in a different way, since we’re learning more about Steven as he’s learning more about his caller, and trying to figure out what to do about the situation. The flashback scenes to Steven’s childhood with Judah Lewis in the role weren’t nearly as strong, but they do add a lot more depth to the story being told.
Although much of Lifeline does just involve this one actor in a room, Alfuqaha capably sets up shots with his DP Rasa Partin, in a way that keeps things far more visually interesting than it might have been otherwise. The movie generally is constructed in a way that belies the film’s budget or the simplicity of its premise or location, and the score by Omar Habbak is also tastefully used throughout to help draw out the emotions.
The film ends in a rather unresolved way, which some might find frustrating, but the film also comes in at a taut 80 minutes, and that actually helps with the tension created around Steven’s situation.
Well-written and executed with a brilliant performance by Stewart, Lifeline is a strong, powerful drama that ended up being better than many of the movies I saw at Sundance this year. This is a movie that thoroughly connected with me in ways I wasn’t expecting.
Rating: 7.5/10
Lifeline opens in select theaters and is available to view on digital platforms starting Feb. 21.