Another entry in a long line of unnecessary but not entirely terrible horror remakes is the teen-centric WHEN A STRANGER CALLS. You know it’s aimed at the youth market because our high school protagonist Jill (an appealing Camilla Belle) is grounded by her parents for going 800 minutes over on her cell phone plan. “Do you know how much that cost us?” her dad asks. (”Do you know how funny that is?” I thought.)

So instead of going to the big school bonfire (on the windiest night in cinema, this side of TWISTER), she has to babysit for two kids in one huge, decked-out, expensive, mammoth, awesome, bucks-a-plenty, gargantuan, sweet, had-to-cost-a-fortune, state-of-the-art, fucking cool house that sits alongside a lake in the middle of nowhere, making her a prime target for a serial killer, don’t you think? He taunts her with mysterious phone calls (voiced, but not played, by Lance Henriksen).

Most of its 86 minutes is devoted to Jill creeping around the house verrrry slooowly, jumping at the occasional burst of water or the cat (the cat!), and answering the phone, which rings more times in this movie than mine does in six months. Luckily, Belle is a good enough actress to carry an entire film on her shoulders, even if the suspense is minimal (especially for those who have seen Fred Walton’s 1979 original, known more for its “Have you checked the children?” line than it is for being good).

Points for director Simon West for not showing the killer until the very end. Points taken away for making me hate today’s teenagers even more than I already did. –Rod Lott

Buy it at Amazon.

This entry was posted on Friday, May 19th, 2006 at 10:46 am and is filed under DVD Reviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.