The Call Up review – cheap and cheerful gamer number with a slasher-pic heart

This lowish-budget British film about gamers playing a VR shoot 'em up gone wrong is a modest update on all those killer-website movies in the noughties

With the Imax-scaled Warcraft inbound, this lowish-budget Brit attempt to replicate gaming's immersive properties - stalking nerds around an, of course, mysterious corporation's wipe-clean HQ while they beta test a VR shoot 'em up - risks looking a bit Amstrad. Yet it's been capably produced: writer-director Charles Barker may cleave to a dusty old slasher-pic template but he hustles everybody briskly between levels, sending his industrious design team ahead of him to redress a presumably limited number of sets. If it's far from bleeding edge - within days, it'll look as dated as Tron and The Lawnmower Man do today - it's a modest upgrade on all those killer-website movies that popped up a decade ago, keeping us at least semi-interested as to who stands and falls. It'll fill a slot, if your Xbox connection is down and you feel inspired to quit the sofa.