When a Stranger Calls (2006)

[Leisher]

Remake of the 1979 Carol Kane film of the same name.

IMHO, one of the greatest lines in movie history is "The calls are coming from inside the house!" I guess that's a spoiler if you never saw the original, didn't watch the trailer for this one (it's in it), and are oblivious to movie pop culture.

Camilla Belle plays the babysitter and ranges from mediocre acting to good enough acting. (She's also 20 in real life when this film was shot, so oogle away. She's got a smoking hot body and a weird super hot, maybe not that hot vibe going in the movie depending on the angle. I mean, she's hot, but some angles aren't the best for her. Also, she seems dead in her eyes.) I don't really blame her because she doesn't have a lot to work with. In the Carol Kane film, I seem to remember this scene lasting for the first 10 minutes or so. This is that same scene for an entire movie.

The house is really the star of the movie because it's a ridiculously beautiful and huge house. Very modern. Lights turn on automatically. A huge nature room. A guest house. A live in house keeper. Etc. The elements of the house are actually how they keep the story going for as long as they do, which is a bad thing. See, the majority of the movie, let's say 75% of it, is just Camilla walking around the house/grounds. You might think I'm bullshitting you, but it's true. 20% of it is her on the phone. The last 5% is the killer.

Also, I don't know who installed the alarm/security/garage door systems, but fire them immediately. There are a lot of inconsistencies in how those all operate during the course of the movie. And if you were babysitting, in the remote mountains, and the alarm was set off, would you tell the alarm company everything is fine without even looking around the room you're in? Yeah...

I want to say the direction was good, and it mostly was, but that house was a burden. Even by the end I couldn't explain to you the layout. I guess I have to blame Simon West for that, but the rest of the movie wasn't his fault. He did the best he could with a weak script.

They include some cannon fodder, and you'll immediately recognize them as such. Shallow characters meant to drive the plot and all suffering from hilariously bad cell signals. The cell phones are pretty funny. The movie was released in 2006 and the phones are all flip phones.

There are three actors you might recognize. Is that a Valkyrie? Yes it is... There's also Pam's boyfriend. And the killer is a character actor. The best acting in the film is done by a detective in a scene really early in the movie.

Finally, the killer sure does know this house and the grounds like the back of his hand. He can see everything, move supernaturally, can break down doors with ease, strolls around even when he has to know the cops are on the way, and yet can't physically handle a teenage girl...

I could see this being scary to actual teenage girls who babysit, but everyone else can skip it.