By entering your email address you agree to our Terms of Use and Privacy Policy and consent to receive emails from Time Out about news, events, offers and partner promotions.
🙌 Awesome, you're subscribed!
Thanks for subscribing! Look out for your first newsletter in your inbox soon!
By entering your email address you agree to our Terms of Use and Privacy Policy and consent to receive emails from Time Out about news, events, offers and partner promotions.
By entering your email address you agree to our Terms of Use and Privacy Policy and consent to receive emails from Time Out about news, events, offers and partner promotions.
🙌 Awesome, you're subscribed!
Thanks for subscribing! Look out for your first newsletter in your inbox soon!
When A Stranger Calls
Film
Advertising
Time Out says
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.
By entering your email address you agree to our Terms of Use and Privacy Policy and consent to receive emails from Time Out about news, events, offers and partner promotions.
🙌 Awesome, you're subscribed!
Thanks for subscribing! Look out for your first newsletter in your inbox soon!
You may also like
You may also like
Discover Time Out original video
The best things in life are free.
Get our free newsletter – it’s great.
By entering your email address you agree to our Terms of Use and Privacy Policy and consent to receive emails from Time Out about news, events, offers and partner promotions.
🙌 Awesome, you're subscribed!
Thanks for subscribing! Look out for your first newsletter in your inbox soon!