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Bookmark this pageWhen A Stranger Calls (2006)
Director: Simon West
Movie review
From Time Out London
Fred Walton’s 1979 version of ‘When a Stranger Calls’ featured an intensely scary 20-minute opening followed by over an hour of tedious padding and a killer ending. Simon West’s recidivist teen horror movie ‘revisits’ the original, stretches out the first 20 minutes to feature length and, likewise, outstays its welcome by about 60 minutes. Also, crucially, it ignores the fact that Walton’s landline-based twist ending makes no sense in an age of mobile phones. ‘Have you checked the children?’ enquires a mystery male caller repeatedly, driving 16-year-old babysitter Jill Johnson (Camilla Belle) out of her mind and, eventually, out of the house. Her overused mobile phone confiscated by her angry parents, the helpless Jill can only check the doors and windows, and reset the fancy alarm system. Meanwhile, she’s chased around her employer’s glass-heavy house and shadow-filled designer garden by West’s relentless Steadicam and hand-held cameras. If you’ve seen either ‘Black Christmas’ or ‘Halloween’, there’s nothing new here: the hyped-up score keeps telling us we ought to be scared, but the suspense feels mechanical and fake.Author: Nigel Floyd
Time Out London Issue 1864: May 10-17 2006
Cast & crew
Director: Simon West
Producer: Jon Davis, Ken Lemberger, Wyck Godfrey
Cast: Camilla Belle, Brian Geraghty, Katie Cassidy, Tommy Flanagan, Tessa Thompson, Clark Gregg full cast
Rated: 15
Duration: 87 mins
UK Release: May 12 2006
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