Unknown Caller

The writer-director Funmi Adetola loves to address everyday problems in the professional as well as personal spaces people go through. He focuses on developing a character driven narrative to increase audience engagement with the content through the male protagonist Keon (Emmanuel Trier).

 

The plot of the short film revolves around Keon a bright young black man whose anger has slowly grown due to microaggressions from seemingly everyone and is given a dangerous offer from an unknown caller.

 

In the opening sequence of Unknown Caller, Camera tracks the day-to-day routine of Keon to establish his relationship with his co-workers during the Internship and also helps to provide depth into the subject matter of the film. A series of long shots, mid-shots, and closeup shots are utilised to showcase some gestures of Keon that evoke a sense of mystery in minds of the viewers so that they want to know more about the same. The font size of Graphix the company Keon works for can represent the dominance, and arrogance visible in their behaviour with him. The colour pallet, set design, lighting, dialogues, costume, hair, and makeup has been kept simple as well as subtle to complement the key messages Unknown Caller attempts to communicate to make it relatable allowing the audience to learn lessons essential to overall growth in life.

 

In terms of performance, Emmanuel Trier plays the role of Keon who knows his work perfectly but still gets discriminated against and verbally abused by his colleagues. Emmanuel understands the nuances of his character and depicts it through body language, voice modulation, facial expressions, and eyes all through the changing scenarios in the script. The chemistry between him and his co-stars works perfectly to uplift the mood building up the suspense as the short film reaches the climax of the dramatic piece.

Funmi Adetola plays the unknown caller who wants to set things right for Keon by adopting the wrong method to end the intern’s problem. Adetola utilises his voice to bring in a sense of fear when he starts killing people. Adetola portrays it so well that the character stays with the audience even after finishing the film.

 

Unknown Caller talks about racism that still exists and the act of discrimination should be completely eradicated from the society or workplace if one does not want to suffer from mental health issues. The short film reiterates that having conversations or letting any stranger into someone’s life through any medium like social media etc can be detrimental to the well-being of self, loved ones, and people around. The thriller movie highlights that though the right to expression is given to everyone, we should be extra careful when it comes to using the same. The cinematic piece restates that respect is something that every employee in the company deserves irrespective of the type of work or the hours he has been putting in contributing to the success of the office. The creative piece tells us that problems in life always exist and we need to deal with them but compromising with the conscience and peace of mind to do so shouldn’t be an option.