When A Stranger Calls

When A Stranger Calls

Director: Simon West

Screenplay by Jake Wade Wall from the 1979 version by Steve Feke and Fred Walton

Screen Gems

Yes, remake-lovers, if there could be such a thing, you're going to get your fill this year, especially with horror films. This one is from a classic urban legend (and if you don't know it, the better off you'll be), so even the "original" film wasn't exactly mining new territory. In a way, this remake can be forgiven for its lack of narrative originality right off the bat. These are stories that will be told forever and are always good.

Now...I'm not saying When A Stranger Calls is a classic by association here. But it has a good foundation, and the next step is making a good movie out of it.

Babysitter Jill Johnson (Camilla Belle) has been given the easy charge of minding two kids who are already asleep in a house that is mythical in awesomeness. We know that once the parents leave, she's going to be harassed by a phone-wielding psycho. The suspects for the growly voice over the phone are set up early--is it the jerkwad boyfriend? the older son back from college? the maid? the cat? maybe Lance Henriksen? Whatever the case, futile calls to the police are made because the voice isn't making any threats or using naughty language. And your hope for Jill and her best friend to raid the liquor cabinet and start frenching each other is futile because of the PG-13 rating. Of course, the psycho caller starts worrying the babysitter with his uncanny knowledge, and there's a surprise (sort of, if you've never heard this legend before, or not seen the trailer, or the 1979 film...what a whammy awaits for you!).

West does a good job here, especially with sound. But it's terribly cliche-ridden. And in the seventies before caller-ID and all the bells and whistles of communications technology, I'm sure that getting a strange phone call seemed pretty scary. A terrible mistake is made early on here, as there's no hint of such a thing as caller-ID in this new, modern version until way past the halfway point. You would think you'd get the "Unknown Caller" shot right off the bat, but you don't...so it sort of leads you to believe that in this modern house with all the gadgets and so forth, the only thing that's missing is caller-freaking-ID. Finally, they get over that, but it's long enough to make you wonder.

The 67,865,451st depiction of a girl trying to get into her car only to drop the keys in some netherworld of fairy keyland where searching hands aren't welcome occurs here, as well as the 109,872,614th supernatural killer in a film who turns out to be super ordinary when it fits the plot for our herione to overcome the challenge. And what's up with all the fake scares? Again, shapes that aren't what they seem, cats coming out of nowhere, doors swinging to their original position to reveal...nothing! The spirit of this horror film is to conceal everything for a little over an hour, and there's some cool set-ups for mood, but all that sameness drags it down. It's that C+ student mentality--something cool is under the surface, but we don't want to go out of our way to make the surface any better.

I think most people will probably have a pretty good time with this...until the terrible trappings of the finale.