|
Advertisement |
Overall Rating
  Awesome: 3.45%
Worth A Look: 4.6%
Average: 17.24%
Pretty Bad: 25.29%
Total Crap: 49.43%
9 reviews, 33 user ratings
|
|
| When a Stranger Calls (2006) |
by William Goss
"When A Stranger Bores"
|
Let’s crunch some digits, shall we? If a thriller runs roughly 80 minutes without credits, and only about fifteen of those minutes are mildly suspenseful, then this leaves us with a rather poor ratio of frights to frames. Such is the case with the remake of 'When A Stranger Calls,' a thriller with barely any thrills, which is an equation that never really adds up.Jill (Camilla Belle, The Chumscrubber) is grounded for running up her cell phone bill by about 800 minutes, so she must pay back her parents with a string of babysitting gigs, all the while sans phone or vehicle (!). Her latest job is for a family whose upscale lakeside estate is immensely secluded (!!), leaving the police at least twenty minutes away (!!!). The exposition continues to…continue, as Jill receives the occasional vague threat from an anonymous caller, meanders throughout the three-story home, and is assaulted by the world’s loudest birds/icemaker/black cat/etc.
For the initial hour, boredom looms as everyone waits two beats before answering the phone and motion-activated lighting provides a lazy attempt at something resembling tension. Only after a drawn-out hour of exposition does the titular baddie appear to chase around his rather patient victim (whose first appearance is – wait for it – at track practice) and the children she rarely checked on. Until then, the ever-attractive Belle just wanders around, speaking aloud to herself or a phone with an increasingly grating whine, just waiting for her chance to scream and/or shout.
With barely any other character interaction taking place, props must be given to Lance Henriksen, who literally phones in his performance as the menacing voice of the stranger. His physical counterpart, played by Tommy Flanagan, is a faceless villain, with little more to do than provide a presence from which Jill and the kids flee. Barely any impression is left from the occasional supporting cast, most of which appear in the beginning and then vanish until director Simon West (Con Air, the first Tomb Raider) and screenwriter Jake Wade Wall deem them convenient.If one were to lop off the equally useless prologue and epilogue, as well as just about any one reel in between, they would have a taut TV movie buried in the 83-minute running time of this assembly of false scares, red herrings, and rampant clichés. (The inclusion of commercials could shave off even more time.) However, the current feature-length incarnation of 'When A Stranger Calls' is nothing but strictly by the numbers.
link directly to this review at https://www.efilmcritic.com/review.php?movie=13780&reviewer=409
originally posted: 02/12/06 21:20:09
![[printer]](/images/icon/printer.gif) printer-friendly format
|
Horror Remakes: For more in the Horror Remakes series, click here.
|
 |
USA
03-Feb-2006 (PG-13)
DVD: 16-May-2006
UK
12-May-2006
Australia
16-Mar-2006
|
|
Articles 
subscribe to this feed![[AllPosters.com]](/images/icon/ap.gif){kind=icon}
