>>REVIEW
WHEN A STRANGER CALLS
STARRING Camilla Belle and Tommy Flanagan
DIRECTED BY Simon West
Now playing
Check listings
Long before goalie masks and Ginsu fingertips, there was a horror movie that was marketed solely on a chilling utterance, "Have you checked the children?" The film was 1979’s When A Stranger Calls, in which a young Carol Kane played a babysitter terrorized by a creepy caller. Thankfully, she then went on to marry Latka, club Bill Murray with a toaster, and we all pretty much forgot about this movie.
Until now.
As lousy as the original When A Stranger Calls was, I’ll say this much – it had a legit look. The home was reasonably suburban and the female star looked like your typical unglamorous teenager-in-peril.
But director Simon West (Con Air) just doesn’t do no-nonsense. So for this, the re-make, Jill Johnson (Camilla Belle), the babysitter, looks like she wandered in from a Cosmo Girl shoot, and the house is a ridiculously gigantic fortress situated in the middle of nowhere, complete with birdies, fishies, a remote-control fireplace, a cat that constantly trips automatic lights, a live-in housekeeper who may or may not be making thumps and bangs upstairs, and more rooms and corridors than the downtown Hyatt.
In what has to be considered a desperate attempt to bring the story into 2006, Jill, who is supposed to be joining her friends at a big bonfire party, is grounded by her parents for going 800 minutes over her allotted cellphone minutes (geez, I can remember when teens were stalked in movies like this for having too much sex – I never thought I’d see one getting chased by a psycho for irresponsible wireless charges).
With nothing else to do, Jill takes the babysitting gig, suffers through endless false alarms (have you ever been startled by a refrigerator’s ice maker? By a clothes dryer? OK, me neither) and… at almost an hour in, finally figures out what we already know, that the heavy breather who keeps calling and hanging up is a cold-blooded killer – and he’s a lot closer than she thinks.
This should be pulse-pounding stuff, but When A Stranger Calls suffers through too much down time – but then, that’s what happens when about 20 minutes of material is stretched to feature length. By the time Mr. Creepy shows up, it’s too late – we’re too tired of that phone ringing endlessly, and that damn cat scampering from one room to another, to even muster up the energy to be scared. |
Copyright ©2006 FFWD. All rights reserved.