When A Stranger Calls (2006) Review

The creative minds behind When A Stranger Calls

had a now-familiar puzzle to solve: How to remake a beloved 1970s genre hit with a fresh updated feel without ruining the original concept. But here, they had an extra twist to the trick – Fred Walton’s sharp 1979 thriller starring Carol Kane as a terrorized babysitter was written around the telephone technology of the day, drawing extra attention to the modern thriller dilemma of getting around the cell phones. In addition, the main twist of the plot has become a celebrated cliché, which has been spoofed in Saturday Night Live and Scream, that most viewers are bound to know going in. I don’t think I’m spoiling things to say, “Jill, we've traced the calls... They're coming from inside the house!”

For director Simon West (Con Air), the solution seems to be to distract us with architecture. The film’s opening sequence takes place in a spacious but cozy home that’s just charming – at least until it’s the site of a vicious homicide. Detectives identify it as the work of a serial killer that targets babysitters across the western USA. We’re also told that the killer is known for tearing his victims to pieces with his bare hands, leaving us suitably on guard for an evening of slasher horror.

This segues directly into the fine architecture belonging to starlet Camilla Belle (The Chumscrubber), a talented half-Brazilian teen with an angelic face and body equal to her role as high school track star Jill Johnson. Jill is peeved. She’s being punished for overuse of her cell phone (aha!), and has to spend the evening babysitting and studying instead of parting with her friends. She arrives for her job to find her clients the Mandrakises live in a remote mountain super-house. Their ultramodern abode is worth the price of admission on its own – a cutting-edge smart house decorated with discerning taste and outfitted with the latest details: motion-sensor lighting, remote controlled everything, and a centerpiece enclosed rainforest full of rare plants, birds and fish. All these bells & whistles allow for a complex dance as Jill spends the next hour scaring herself in the big house and being scared on purpose by an unknown creep who keeps calling her. He also seems to know what Jill and other occupants of the house (kids, maid, unseen son home from college, visiting friend) are doing all the time.

Okay, so even viewers coming in cold should be able to figure out that the Stranger (Tommy Flanagan of Alien vs. Predator) is already in the house, which may make a second viewing more fun as you work out just how he’s getting around the place killing folks without being seen. But the kids in Jill’s care might have a better idea, sleeping through the stalking until the last act, when the Stranger pops out to chase everybody. All hints of a super-powered madman are forgotten as handsome Scot actor Flanagan is such a standard movie psycho that you wish they’d been a bit less reverent toward the original and provided a more interesting bad guy. Another item that doesn’t pay off is Jill’s tack star status. Why introduce it if she never gets a chance to outrace the killer?

When A Stranger Calls moves along as well as can be expected given the simple-minded material, providing a few jolts here and there, but it will no doubt work best as home slumber party viewing, just as the original always has