Truly Dreadful Film

Self-important, over-dramatic, uninspired.

Unshakable, witty and deeply felt, the film will be paying emotional dividends for a long, long time.

Just intense enough to provide a much-needed diversion, just lightweight enough to make you forget about it soon after it’s over. It’s not exactly “good,” per se, but it does what it sets out to do in terms of putting us on edge, which makes it … successful?

As I've said before, I like taking a chance on low budget independent genre movies, because you can find some real gems out there. However, you can also find some examples that aren't very good at all, and "Private Number" is unfortunately one such example. As I said in my summary line, the movie feels like it was made by two units, each working on one half of the movie - and not successfully. The first half of the movie is simply the central character going through one hellish experience after another with absolutely no progression in the plot at all. In the second half, the plot does start to progress, but often in a really confusing manner; it often feels like linking footage and vital explanations were cut out or simply not filmed at all. Toward the end of the movie, there is a major twist, but if you have seen your share of psychological thrillers, the twist probably won't be all that surprising. The acting is okay, I guess. And for what was a real low budget, the movie looks fairly decent (except for the cheesy "fire" sequence). But the story is such a mess that I suspect most viewers will stop watching before the first half of the movie has totally passed. And the remaining viewers who stick it out to the end will probably not find the resolution worth it.

Extremely low budget. Moderately entertaining. Fiendishly foul finale. There, in a nutshell, we have the synopsis for the marginally cut-above-standard thriller "Private Number".Michael (Hal Ozsan of TV's "Dawson's Creek") has a case of serious writer's block and it's killing his progress at completing a follow-up novel to a minor best seller debut effort. Then to compound his woes he begins getting freaky phone calls in the middle of the night which seem to evolve into something supernatural. Soon Michael finds himself researching a series of unsolved murders in the California town in which he and his bride Katherine (Nicholle Tom) reside. I'll stop here at the risk of becoming a Spoiler, except to append that things get pretty dang twisty-turny over the cacophonous course of this flick's frenzied finish. And wind up most ominously open-ended.Sniff, sniff. What's that I smell? Can you say "Sequel"?

Not that this movie was by any means great (or even particularly good) before it, but it was at least borderline watchable but the ending.My goodness the ending, a really pathetic and desperate way to end a movie and one that makes little sense to what we've just seen previously.Clearly I can not go into details without spoiling it, so I won't do that but yeah I had to point out the reason this movie went from what probably would have been a 4/10 to a 2/10 in the end.On the plus-side they manage to create some really neat-looking visuals in some of the scenes, and I guess the acting isn't terrible.Tom Sizemore and Judd Nelson have the biggest faces on the poster but they only pop up from time to time, if they weren't the most famous people in the movie they'd probably wouldn't even been on it.

Okay ... so, I hated the first 1/3 of the movie ... boring ... tedious ... and I fell asleep, which is a first for me.The acting is adequate ... and the further I got into the movie I found that I had two possible villains, and just when I thought I had the right person ... I switched to my second choice, which was actually my first choice! Bingo!The two leads are actors (Nicholle Tom & Hal Ozsan) I would like to see more of, and Judd Nelson is usually a good choice as well. Which means I have no real complaints about the acting, or the special effects. However, what I do have a problem with is the ending ... can you say "overkill?" Towards the end, the screen goes black ... and this is where I would have made a change. I would have allowed the screen to remain black for two to three minutes ... then I would have let the credits roll. I believe my ending would have been a far better ending ... ?! For an audience to wait on the edge of their seats, then dropped, that would have been superb! But, with this film, the wait would have to be at least two minutes of cold, black, silence.I'm not so sure I will watch this movie again, but if I do, I'll skip the first 1/3.