Jill Johnson is a naughty girl who goes over her cell phone bill with 800 minutes and has to pay it off by babysitting for some doctor and his wife in their big house. When she arrives in the house the kids are already asleep, the couple leaves and she has the whole house to herself. But soon the phone starts ringing and she recieves one weird prank call after another. Later on the prank calls begin to turn into real threats, and Jill calls the police who says the she'll be safe inside the house and next time when the caller calls, she should try to make him stay on the line for 60 seconds in order for the police to be able to trace the call. She manages to do so, only to find out that the caller is actually inside the house(!)
This movie's a remake but since I haven't seen the original movie, I can't compare them. The biggest problem with this movie was the fact that you knew the exact story and what was gonna happen even before viewing it. I read it on the back cover and that was about it, so when later watching it there was nothing new and you knew exactly how it was gonna go down. To tell you the truth, it felt quite boring.
It starts off fairly interesting though, Jill arrives at the house and the phone starts ringing, not from the prank caller but from other people that she already know, all to build a little tension, and every time the phone rings you expect things to take a different turn. But after a while it gets boring, too many calls leading nowhere and when the prank caller finally calls you're already bored out of your mind with all the pointless stuff that has been going on till now.
Then it keeps going like that for quite some time. One call after another that scares Jill more and more but does not manage to scare the viewer. It's of course supposed to build some tension but it pretty much fails to do so. It becomes a drag and it takes way too much time before anything remotely interesting happens. Time goes by and after a numerous amounts of yawns things pick up a little. She calls the cops and they tell her to try and stay on the line with the caller for more than 60 seconds in order for them to be able to trace the call.
More time goes by and then finally it happens. She manages to stay on the line for more than 60 seconds, but then she gets a call from the cops telling her that the caller is inside the house. From then on it's actually quite exciting and what makes it interesting and suspensefull is the fact that you know that someone's in the house but since we haven't got to see that person yet, it's the mystery that makes it exciting and brings tension.
Without mystery, everything that was suspensefull and had tension before is taken away, and they sure managed to take that feeling away by introducing the prank caller in the flesh. Once you get to see the man who has been calling it's not very exciting anymore and the whole movie turns into a chase, cat and mouse style. I think it stayed really interesting for about 10-15 minutes or so but once the mystery had been revealed, it all went down the drain. I'm not gonna tell you how it ends, but it's not great or the least bit memorable.
The acting is ok and there are a few actors in the movie, but most of the time it's just Jill (Camilla Belle) alone in the big house. This girl is ok though and manages to pull things off quite ok. She's not fantastic but gets the job done so there's no reason to complain. This movie could've actually been quite scary if they had wanted it to be. There are things that could've easily been added to make it more freaky, and also the prank caller is not nearly psychopatic enough.
For a teen audience who doesn't know the first thing about horror this movie might work just fine, but for horror fans it's just way too lame. It has a little suspense, and the rating went up a little due to the scene when Jill found out that the caller was inside the house. That was a good 10 minutes, but that also carried the only real suspense this movie had to offer. The acting's ok and it's quite nicely shot, but it was a crappy choise to make a remake out of. Can't recommend it.
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ALTERNATIVE TITLE:
MOVIE YEAR: 2006
DIRECTOR: Simon West
WRITING CREDITS: Jake Wade Wall, Steve Feke
GENRE: Horror, Thriller
CAST: Camilla Belle, Tommy Flanagan, Tessa Thompson
COUNTRY: USA
RUNTIME: 87 min
RATING: 4/10
When a Stranger Calls Website/IMDB Click here
When a Stranger Calls Trailer Click here
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