The Latest Gimmick: Last Call, An Interactive Horror Movie, Will Phone You During The Film

So much for those 'please turn off your cell phone' messages before movies. A new German horror film called Last Call is pushing a new 'interactivity' gimmick that will have one member of each theatrical audience receive a call from an onscreen character during the film. The ghost of William Castle approves.

Jawbone (via Gizmodo) has news on the film, which harbors some not insignificant ambitions. Last Call won't just phone up an audience member during the film. Special language recognition software will "transform the participant's answers via mobile phone into specific instructions. A specially developed software then processes these commands and launches an appropriate follow-up scene. The dialogue between the movie's main actress and an audience member leads to a different film – and outcome – every time: sometimes with a happy end, sometimes with a more gruesome one."

So it works like this: you provide your cell number when purchasing a ticket, then software will randomly call one of the submitted numbers. Answer the call and you'll hear the on-screen actress requesting help. Then the audience member "has to help her escape by choosing a path through the old, rundown sanatorium. Furthermore, he also decides whether she should help other victims to flee the scene -and every single choice shapes her fate: it's a matter of life and death."

Amusing concept, sure, and it seems like great fodder for drunken midnight screenings. Maybe not so much for run of the mill events. It is so easy to envision how audience members would mess with the system. "What should I do?" "Eat bacon!" "Lay down and die!" What happens if the person called just hangs up? How many possible outcomes will there be?

Anyway, here's the sales pitch / trailer: