When A Stranger Calls...take the phone off the hook (When A Stranger Calls (DVD))

Member Name: Palmer89

Product:	When A Stranger Calls (DVD)
Date:	23/07/09 (43 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Tense, damn fine house

Disadvantages: Poorly done, terrible ending, typical american young kids thriller

When A Stranger calls is a thriller staring Camilla Belle as a babysitter grounded on the evening of the big school bonfire, her task, to look after a couple of sleeping children for a middle aged rich couple out in the woods whilst they are enjoying a meal, the kids are asleep, the maid is in feeding the birds and fish and the house has a high tech alarm system and windows all around the house, no one can get in, surely, wrong, they forgot to take into account one very obvious thing, a young, naive girl of 16.

Why in thrillers and horrors, does this happen to a group or singular young teen, for me it always makes the film less scary, surely the tension and suspense put into the film is there in order for you to want the victim to survive, all too often though in films such as this, the viewers are activly wanting the victim to be struck down by the killer.

This is a remake of the 1979 horror of the same name, although I have yet to see that, I have heard this is a better version...which doesn't make me want to see the original, the lead is supposed to be a smart, athletic 16 year old girl who has been grounded and punished with babysitting the couples 2 children (who's names aren't even told to the babysitter...), she's certainly not the brightest spark in the film despite a few clever ideas, such as the tequila/electric fire...she certainly gets frightend at the easiest things, such as Roas, the maid, not being in the aviatory for a few seconds, she starts to lose it, perhaps also running across to the guest house, knowing someone is watching you and leaving the house unattended (despite the alarm) and then locking yourself in the guest house in the pitch black...not the cleverest idea (although no harm eventually really comes from this).

The whole plot is your general amaerican horror classic, young girl, alone, being terrorised, what next, either she'll be brutally murdered or she'll somehow escape, the ending I thought was fairly obvious, not only that but it ended very quickly, as if the directors had run out of ideas and thought they should end it, we see the killer for around 5 minutes before suddenly...it's all over, i've seen better endings from Eastenders quite frankly.

The big thing about this film is phones, everyone except Jill and the stranger seem to have horrible signal, ok, maybe the police as well, how and why neither her parents or the childs parents answered their phone (to someone you may think as very important to them at the time) is rather unsual, i found Tiffany's dilemma rather humorous I have to say, if someone was that scared they could easily dial 911 or phone Jill back.

One good thing about this film is that it does play quite well on the suspense and tension, rather than showing the killer what is insinuated is alot more scary than plainfully put infront of you, too many films these days things gore = scary, despite this though we still ended up wanting the babysitter to die, maybe a bit sadistic to wish a 16 year old girl brutally hacked to death but hey, this is a movie.

At the end of the day, this is not a terrible movie, it is watchable and in the same way that Hostel is I would watch it again in the future, but the predictability and sheer unoriginalness (if thats even a word) means this movie had to do something special to make it any different to your normal, corny american young thriller, unfortunatly it did no such thing, it's not a bad movie on the face of things, it's easily watchable on a lazy day or to have on in the background and some parts are very tense, although none of it is really scary, the ending is awful and very quick and the lead (although not Belles fault) not being the smartest puts this film low down on the thrillers/scary list, watchable but with so many annoyances it isn't really very scary.

Summary: Not scary, a little tense, watchable but highly annoying