F

Abysmal. It gets worse the more I think about it.

Ha! I knew it!

Details?

WHEN A STRANGER CALLS faces an uphill battle on its' mission to thrill audiences as most are aware of the film's surprise twist before the studio logo even unfold. Whether the viewer has seen the '70s film it's based on, heard the around-the-campfire spine-tingler it inspired, or seen one of the ads studio Screen Gems is running to promote the new, spruced-up version, they know this all-important line - "The calls are coming from inside the house!" It is delivered midway through the film, which depicts babysitter Jill Johnson's (Camilla Belle, THE CHUMSCRUBBER) night of terror as she is harrassed by a nameless caller whose contacts increase in menace as time progresses, and sets in motion the events of the action-filled climax. We know this line is effective (the murderer who we thought was terrorizing from afar could be in the next room sharpening his blade, it's enough to send a series of chills down your spine), so the question is: Does the rest of director Simon West's (LARA CROFT: TOMB RAIDER) redo scare or bore?

The answer is: It does both with style to spare. This is a definitive cinematic mixed bag, a film which rises due to atmosphere and a strong lead performance from a dedicated actress, but then falls due to a painful scare deficit and an uneven pace. The film opens on a bland note with a condescending prologue there to introduce the idea of a villian who hunts babysitters, but which fails to enlighten or scare. The problem is the film's rating, "PG-13," which allows the coveted teen audience who could be deterred by a hardcore "R"-rating to see it. It's never so apparent West is restraining himself than in the prologue, which uses the sound of the stranger calling and then murdering a victim, but sets it to an image of a carnival attendee losing a red balloon, the balloon symbolizing the victim (we later see this balloon ravaged on the side of the road), which is more amusing than it is chilling. And then when a police officer arrives at the crime scene, he's told there's a pile of gore in the next room so horrifying even the coroner is unsure of how he should approach it. But instead of seeing this wretched corpse, we're treated to the police officer's awe-filled face. I do believe there is a time when imagination should be employed in a horror film, but this is a "Z"-grade slasher and we know it, so this entire scene, instead of terrifying us, bores us with its' cowardice.

It improves when actress Camilla Belle appears. In the role of terrified, determined babysitter Jill Johnson, Belle awards the thin proceedings a dramatic power and sense of innocence-being-bloodied not in the script, but in her eyes and her depiction of Jill's reactions and emotions. She's in most shots and uses each to carve out a character we can sympathize with and root for. In fact, she's so great we can almost forgive the first 25 minutes with Jill which serve to set up a home dispute between her and her parents, a high school relationship drama she's part of, and a bonfire party she's missing to babysit, all plot elements which are shoved into the spotlight for a gigantic amount of time, but never pay off in a significant way. The rest of the performers fail to register, as the no-name actors fall short in their attempts to bring vivid life to the (often nameless and emotionless) peripheral characters. I was rather disappointed, though, by how West handled the children actors. Placing children in harrowing situations is a great suspense-builder, but these actors aren't even given much dialogue and spend most of the film in bed recovering from the flu.

But while his misuse of dedicated children actors is disappointing, his control of suspense, atmosphere, and villian-hinting is strong. Though the house Jill's babysitting in is amusing in an unintentional way due to how goth it is (how many people do you know who have multiple statues of deformed tribal beings in their home?), West shoots it with shadow-covered menace and when action does arise, it's shot with an urgent taste for claustrophobia. His pacing isn't the best, though, as the film spends an untold amount of time showing Jill wandering the home, answering the phone to hear the stranger breathing, and hearing odd noises which, after an investigation, result in nothing, while the last 25 minutes include tons of action (the rest has next-to-none). Also, he should have cut the prologue and the nightmare hospital-set epilogue, as both are useless filler and add nothing to the film's message or suspense. In fact, they lessen both by forcing it to begin and end with a whimper.

Overall, WHEN A STRANGER CALLS is not a great film. It's also not a bad one. I don't recommend you spend your time seeing it in theatres (there are better films out), but if you want to watch a recline-in-the-seat-and-munch-popcorn mindless thriller on a Saturday night, by all means add it to your Netflix queue or rent it at the video store. On such a night, this film's action and thrills will fit the bill.

B-

Wait...

The lead actress is actually good?

It's not that bad.

I could have done without the awful acting and the attempt to act like the 'He's inside the house' twist was still a secret, even though the whole marketing campaign was focused around it, but it was fun, and I've seen much worse (BOOGEYMAN).

C+



Far from it.

Well, at least she looks good while attempting to act.

That's true.

And her blonde friend.

It's not really that bad, I've seen much worse horror fare than this. I basically echo Libs' sentiments in that other thread. It's got laughably bad writing (especially in the beginning, then the dialogue thankfully disappears for the most part), subpar acting, poor pacing, and plenty of cliches & moments that don't make sense. Plus it's just wimpy for a horror film, but that's to be expected given the PG-13 rating. But the movie really looks great, and the last 20 minutes or so are pretty entertaining & quite fun to view with a theater filled with hyperactive teenagers. Still it's not enough to make up for the laborious first hour. It plods and plods and plods, the night seems to last at least 30 hours as our hapless heroine wanders around yelling "Rosa!" while carrying a fireplace poker. I don't really think it was a good idea to stretch 20 minutes of the original film into a full 90 minutes, there obviously isn't enough story there. grade - C

I love how pretty much every "positive" WASC review says: "The writing sucks, the directing sucks, the pacing is bad, and the acting is terrible... but it's not THAT bad!"

I noticed the same thing.

It happens a lot with films that get absolutely destroyed before their release. People go in with their gutter low expectations, and leave fully aware that it was a bad film, but maybe it wasn't the worst film they've ever seen, so suddenly it's a C or a C+.

Like I said earlier, if this film was released with any sort of positive buzz around it, people would be giving it F's left and right.

I don't care what my expecations were. If I walk out of a film wanting my money back when I didn't pay money to see it, it's a friggin' F.

Yeah, but I didn't really want my money back.

It's like an episode of like Baywatch or some crap like that, it's lackluster in nearly every aspect but so goofy that I found it to be somewhat of a guilty pleasure.

I didn't have low expectations. I was just hoping that the film would be entertaining, and it was.

I didn't expect to hate it, and then actually end up hating it. If you go in with that kind of mindset, and you weren't entirely impressed, it's kind of obvious that you'll walk out hating the film.

Well, my expectations weren't quite as low as others. I figured it would be a C-level horror movie and got exactly what I expected. It's definitely a thumbs down for me, but I got much more entertainment out of it than say Cursed or The Grudge in recent memory (both of those I'd put around a D/D+).

It wasn't a case of "not entirely impressed." It was a case of "nothing in the movie impressed me at all." It's 70 minutes of the main character walking through the house looking for Rosa, with cat scares and the like sprinkled in. Pointing the camera down a long hallway for 45 seconds is not scary, and considering the audience I saw the film with was laughing during the last reel -- especially the final dream, which got more laughs than the entirety of Fun With Dick and Jane -- I don't think I'm alone in my assessment.

IagreewithLibsandZingaling.Itwasn'tallthatgoodorscaryintheleast bit,butitwasentertainingfrombeginningtoend.IgiveitaC.

It had some tense moments. I liked how the main actress actually did some smart things for once in a horror movie. I say its about a B-.

"Where the bloody FUCK is Rosa?!"

I think the tense moments are solid enough, but the rest sucks. It's really an uphill battle because there's four things going completely against the movie: the acting sucks all around. There's not even a veteran actor thrown in to deliver a decent performance in a shit movie. The dialogue is so, soooo bad. "The OC" has better dialogue. It's not like dialogue from teens HAS to be so bad ("You kissed my boyfriend. Whine." "Yeah. I did. I kissed your boyfriend." "Oh my god, I'm like so disappointed, Hot Friend."). Seriously, it's that bad! The lead actress is a disgrace. The film relies on the lead being scared, and I don't get the vibe. I get the "I'm pretending to be scared" vibe. Aaaand, the big twist (which really isn't the big twist, because it's not revealed until three-quarters the way into the movie) is spoiled in ANY of the TV spots.

But, those tense moments are fun. And it's not "Alone in the Dark" bad or "Boogeyman" bad. Whenever Camilla Belle wasn't pretending to be scared, and when the score was carrying the creepiness of the scene, it worked. But once Belle started saying something (which usually was something like "Who is thisssss? Look, I'm gonna tell on you if you don't say somethingggg!"), the creepiness died.

And yeah, the pacing sucked horribly.

So, I can understand why giving this a C- would seem like a bad thing, but C- to me is "It's bad, but not horrible", and that's it! The acting is bad, but not horrible. The dialogue is really bad, but not the worst. The pacing sucks, but at least it held my attention.

Grade: C-

Kept the doors locked and called the cops?

haha, yeah and she got weapons and kept keys and phones on her.

BKB...

They do find out who he is. They don't need fingerprints of the guy if they catch him.

Was I the only one who thought the stalker looked like Liev Schreiber?

If the Stalker can pull childrens' bodies apart with his bare hands, how could he be manhandled in a fight by a 17-year-old girl?