{"id":566,"date":"2021-09-09T20:51:06","date_gmt":"2021-09-10T00:51:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/darkestlight.org\/b\/?p=566"},"modified":"2021-09-09T20:51:06","modified_gmt":"2021-09-10T00:51:06","slug":"movie-when-a-stranger-calls","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/darkestlight.org\/b\/movie-when-a-stranger-calls\/","title":{"rendered":"Movie: When A Stranger Calls"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Whatever you do, don\u2019t answer the phone.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

I don\u2019t think I\u2019ve ever actually done a movie review here before, though it was always something I thought that I would like to do. While this might be a strange one to start with, I guess in truth it\u2019s just as good as any other. But since it\u2019s the first, I\u2019d like to intro with a bit of how I expect these to go\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I really am going to think of these more as a reaction to the movie. I think I\u2019ll get into a lot of review elements, and I suppose even a reaction is part of a review, but it\u2019s a question of the focus. Yes, you\u2019ll know whether or not I thought a movie was good or bad by the time you get to the end, and you\u2019ll know why, but more than that you\u2019ll know how I feel<\/em> about the movie. I\u2019m also going to have some structured sections, which may or may not change over time, but I won\u2019t get into them here in this intro, you\u2019ll just see them below.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Anyway, these are just going to be movies that I happened to watch and feel like saying something about, so they\u2019re not chosen for any particular purpose. They could be old or new, good or bad, significant or insignificant, or any combination thereof.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Now with no further adieu\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When A Stranger Calls (2006)<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

How it begins<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The opening scene could be good\u2026 for a different movie than this one. The only thing I didn\u2019t like in it was the weird voiceover of phone calls and a female voice telling the person to stop calling, then a scream. This is all over some carnival\/fair imagery shot in such a way as to convey that little bit of horror feel. The imagery felt good if the voiceover didn\u2019t. It turns out the voice we heard was some girl getting murdered somehow. We never see her, not even after she\u2019s dead. That foreshadows later in the movie where we never seem to see anything because all action happens offscreen. But anyway, she was killed\u2026 without a weapon. And the movie seems to imply it was a messy murder scene, although it\u2019s unclear why they\u2019d need as many body bags as you see exit the house for one dead woman even if she was torn into a thousand pieces\u2026 I dunno, seems they could still get her in just one. But you don\u2019t need to worry about her anyway because she will never be mentioned again. This is all just there to prepare you for the idea that you\u2019re going to be watching a movie about a woman basically alone in a house with someone trying to kill her. I know, we\u2019ve never seen that before.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We then finally see a woman running on a track. Her coach is very disappointed with her because she\u2019s not focusing, they both know she can do that lap in 24 seconds after all. Gee, I wonder if she\u2019s going to have to run later in the film. But anyway, she\u2019s a high school student and has high school student drama in her life. You know how it is when you\u2019re a teenage girl\u2026 your best friend kisses your boyfriend and she can\u2019t understand why you won\u2019t just get over it. And there\u2019s this bonfire that EVERYONE at the school is going to. You know, like the bonfires that your high school had that everyone went to. And there\u2019s definitely not any good cell reception at those.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Speaking of cell phones, man does this movie feel dated. You\u2019ve got a Nextel flip phone on screen, and poor Jill is prevented from going to the big bonfire because she went way over the minutes on her cell phone plan! By 800 minutes! It cost her parents a small fortune that they\u2019re making her pay them back for by babysitting, starting on bonfire night.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Setting<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Remember how it started with the carnival? Yeah well the actual story has nothing to do with carnivals, it\u2019s at a fancy house in the middle of nowhere. So of course her Dad drives her there instead of letting her take her own car, because why should she need to be able to drive somewhere in the event of an emergency when she\u2019s in the middle of nowhere? <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Really that\u2019s only the start of things that make no sense in the setup of this movie. We learn very soon after Jill\u2019s arrival that there is a live-in housekeeper. Now you might say, but she\u2019s a housekeeper, not a nanny, she shouldn\u2019t have to keep track of the kids, and I hear you, but\u2026 we also find out that the kids are sick with the flu, and they\u2019re asleep. Really, Jill is there like.. only in the case of an emergency – she spends the whole movie just sitting on the couch or walking around the house, so I feel like the housekeeper could have managed it. Maybe they could just throw a little extra money her way\u2026 I mean, she\u2019s there anyway. But ok, ok, we need Jill to be there because no one wants to watch an old live in housekeeper be scared in a house, they want to watch the pretty young high schooler.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Anyway, like I said, Jill walks around the house and discovers that most of the lights in the house are on auto sensors and turn on as soon as you enter the room. This is an odd choice for a horror movie, as it makes dark hallways decidedly less threatening. There\u2019s some loud noises that don\u2019t really get explained, and wind and tree branches and shaky camera. Oh yeah and a mixture of the creepy guy phone calls with people trying to call from the bonfire. But it\u2019s a very nice house, it\u2019s a shame they didn\u2019t film a better movie there.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Characters \/ Acting<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/strong>So there\u2019s a fair number of characters that we see briefly\u2026 the dad, the couple she\u2019s babysitting for, the housekeeper, some of Jill\u2019s friends\u2026 but they\u2019re not really on screen long enough for it to matter much what acting chops they have. None of them were standout horrible, so I guess they did well enough for their minor roles. It\u2019s really a one woman show though, which makes us focus quite a bit on Jill Johnson.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Jill is portrayed by Camilla Belle, who you might remember from one episode of Walker, Texas Ranger. Really, from a look at her credits I think that might be the place you\u2019re most likely to remember her from. Now, she\u2019s been in more films than I have, so maybe I\u2019m not one to judge, but the performance she gives here in a lead role makes it pretty clear to me why she hasn\u2019t been in anything anyone has heard of\u2026 she\u2019s just\u2026 bad. As her dad drops her off at the house she tells him to have a nice time, and he replies \u201cNow say it like you mean it,\u201d but all I could think was, \u201cNow say it like you\u2019re a good actress.\u201d But for real, she spends a lot of time on camera by herself in this movie, and she is truly awful.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

How I Feel About It<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I knew nothing about this movie going in. It popped up as a recommendation for me on Amazon Prime. So, the movie it made me think of first? Scream. It started with a scene in which a female high school student is alone in a house and gets creepy phone calls and then eventually gets murdered, thus setting up a plot where various high school students get murdered in various ways. This movie was kind of like that opening scene.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So my first thoughts on When A Stranger Calls was that perhaps it was written by a guy who saw Scream and thought, \u201cYou know what would make a really good movie? If you just took the opening scene of Scream and then made that the whole movie. Oh also, that opening scene in Scream worked really well. We\u2019ll open this movie with that opening scene except we\u2019ll do it all off camera. Then we\u2019ll do the whole scene again on camera but for an hour and 20 minutes.\u201d Also, because he wouldn\u2019t want to have to come up with an original idea, he used the whole \u201cbabysitter and the man upstairs\u201d urban legend.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But then when I got on IMDB, I realized this is actually a remake of a 1979 movie of the same name. They\u2019re very different movies. All I\u2019ll say here above when I start getting into spoilers is that the remake turns the first 23 minutes of this movie into an almost 90 minute movie, without adding anything of value\u2026 So it\u2019s no surprise that the plot is spread very thin. It\u2019s entirely derivative in every way, and doesn\u2019t add anything new, or interesting. It\u2019s truly just a much worse version of the original with 2006 phone technology.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Plot<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/strong>Ok friends, if you made it this far, you\u2019ve made it to the spoiler zone. If you think you might actually want to watch this movie unspoiled, now\u2019s the time to click away from here. It feels pretty weird to give a spoiler warning for a 1979 movie especially, but I\u2019m also going to talk about plot from it as well, so, you\u2019ve been warned.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We\u2019ll start with the remake, because that\u2019s the one I watched first. I\u2019m going from memory, so I may have something slightly off. So we know Jill is a runner in high school and her boyfriend kissed her best friend and she has another friend and they\u2019re all going to a bonfire but she can\u2019t because she went over on her cell phone minutes and so her parents are making her babysit to get money to pay them back. Phew. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Once she\u2019s at the house, she gets the tour and the parents leave. She then sort of sits on the couch for awhile, for some reason their fancy hidden in the wall tv is all staticky and making a lot of noise when she turns it on and so she immediately turns it off to avoid waking the kids. That prompts her to instead start snooping around in their bedroom, bathroom, closets, etc and put on some of the mother\u2019s perfume and jewelry. Then she\u2019s about to try on her clothes when – NOISE. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

She goes looking around, and eventually finds the housekeeper, Rosa. No problem. Then she makes her way back to the couch and there\u2019s phone calls. Some from creepy breathing guy. One from other friend, who Jill tells to give boyfriend the number to reach her there. One from some guy at bonfire prancing her. More from creepy breathing guy. One from boyfriend. Now I don\u2019t really recall the order of all of those, or how they intersperse with other events, but\u2026 yeah. So at some point fairly early on the house alarm goes off for some reason. She enters the code to turn it off, alarm company calls. Oh I\u2019m the babysitter, blah, blah. They call the parents to confirm. No worries. Why did the alarm go off? Meh, who cares. Maybe it was Rosa The mom calls, says something about the alarm always going off. Seems like a useful alarm. I believe it\u2019s at this point she starts looking for Rosa again but she\u2019s gone. Oh well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Best friend who kissed her boyfriend shows up and demonstrates she\u2019s a bad person for the audience. Also she tells us the garage door is open. After a sort of reconciliation she leaves, and after she\u2019s very scared of wind and trees drops her keys, but eventually gets into her car until a branch blocks her path and she gets out of the car to move it. She then off-camera gets murdered (we presume). Oh right, and around this time there\u2019s a bunch of banging at the front door and Jill opens it but there\u2019s nothing there.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Jill decides to call Rosa\u2019s cell and follows the rings down a hallway that for some reason the family didn\u2019t put motion sensing lights in. Eventually she finds Rosa\u2019s purse in a closet and behind the closet door is for some reason a jacket and hat stuck to the wall at human height for a \u201cscare\u201d. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

At some point she gets another call and realizes the guy can see her so she closes the blinds on the massive windows of the house. It\u2019s here where she calls the police, they suggest she needs to keep him on the line for awhile so they can trace the call. She calls over to the phone in the guest house in case the guy who rents it is home. No answer. But what\u2019s this, a light is on over there, and movement. So of course she decides to go over there.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This is where the RUNNING comes in. She runs over there and gets inside with no problem. Then she gets a call on the guest house phone. It\u2019s creepy guy. She keeps him on the phone for awhile, but oh no! That\u2019s not the phone the police are tracing. Lights on upstairs in the main house. Rosa? She RUNS back over there. This time she drops her flashlight.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Creepy guy calls the house phone again and she keeps him talking while she goes up the stairs toward Rosa\u2019s room. I think this is when police trace the call, and they call her and tell her the call is from INSIDE THE HOUSE. When she gets to Rosa\u2019s room there\u2019s a shower running and she goes in there but no one is in it. Then her best friend is DEAD behind the bathroom door. What a shock.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

She makes her way to the kids who are alive and hiding in a toy chest, and there\u2019s a bunch of chase stuff where the killer comes after them, they hide in this fish pond where the housekeeper was last seen, and when Jill goes underwater she see\u2019s dead Rosa.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

More chase, eventually she makes it to the front door and opens it and runs into the arms of Roy from The Office (seriously, David Denman plays the cop). The kids survive. Creepy guy is arrested. Over? Not quite.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Jill wakes up in a hospital, hits nurse call button. Nothing happens. She gets up and goes outside, no one is there. The phone starts ringing. She answers. It\u2019s creepy guy. She wakes up in the hospital with her parents and doctors and stuff screaming. She\u2019s apparently been driven completely mad by the events. Scary.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So how does the original differ?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Like I said, the remake is the first 23 minutes stretched out. The first shot of the movie is Jill at the door of the couple\u2019s house. They quite quickly explain kids are sick, just chill until we get back. There\u2019s no housekeeper, there\u2019s no alarm system, there\u2019s no bonfire. Parents leave, Jill is talking to a friend on the phone, who she does ask to give her boyfriend the number to reach her. Then it quickly goes to the creepy calls, but this time it\u2019s much more focused on the whole urban legend thing. Instead of lots of creepy breathing, it\u2019s the insistent \u201chave you checked on the children\u201d stuff. That said, it does get into conversation when she tries to keep him on the phone longer for the phone trace. Her conversations with the police and the killer are pretty much the same. Then she runs out of the house when we can see from the killer\u2019s shadow he\u2019s about to come down the stairs, and she runs into the arms of a police officer. However, the kids were murdered upstairs. I think the reason for the opening scene in the remake is they wanted to have a scene with police carrying body bags out and also to say the thing about there not being a murder weapon.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

At this point, the movie is far from over. That was just a setup. It\u2019s almost like they knew the bare bones of this urban legend wasn\u2019t enough to carry an entire movie. It turns out that after spending 7 years in a mental institution, the killer escaped. He starts stalking this woman while the cop has become a private investigator and was hired to track him down. Eventually it winds its way back to Jill\u2019s life. She\u2019s married with 2 children now, and they\u2019re going out to dinner and hire a babysitter. While they\u2019re at dinner, someone calls for them. It\u2019s creepy guy. She gets hysterical, and this is presumably why they felt they needed that hospital scene. But no worries, the babysitter is OK, kids are OK. That night, creepy guy has managed to get into her house though, and while she\u2019s up unable to sleep in the middle of the night, he knocks her husband unconscious and gets into bed in his place, and so it\u2019s actually a surprise when she goes to wake her husband and finds him.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What I Still Want To Know<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

For the original I really only have one question, which is how did the killer know what restaurant they were at so that he could call them. And I guess it\u2019s a little convenient he happened to decide to go after her kids on the night her husband got that promotion and decided to take her out to dinner. But I can look past that I guess.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For the remake\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n

How does the killer know Jill will be babysitting there that night (the movie makes it clear it was last minute)? Why does he insist on killing her? The other people just seem to get killed because they\u2019re in the way. What caused the banging on the front door? I mean the killer is just a guy, not some supernatural entity. Why was the garage door open? Has this guy just been spending his life going around killing random babysitters? I\u2019m sure I could go on.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Judgment<\/strong> (No more spoilers)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So there\u2019s definitely some lulls in the original movie, but it\u2019s WAY better than the remake. It doesn\u2019t go for horror scares, it\u2019s more of a suspense thriller. It has an actual fleshed out plot, etc.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The remake? It\u2019s kind of boring. It\u2019s not a painfully bad movie, it\u2019s just kind of a\u2026 \u201cwhy did they make this\u201d movie. Just sticking to the original script with some minor updates would have been a much better idea. If you\u2019re going to watch one, watch the one from 1979.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Also there\u2019s a sequel to the original, and there\u2019s a Rifftrax for it too! I\u2019ll probably watch that tomorrow\u2026 but I don\u2019t think I\u2019ll be writing about it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Whatever you do, don\u2019t answer the phone. I don\u2019t think I\u2019ve ever actually done a movie review here before, though it was always something I thought that I would like to do. While this might be a strange one to start with, I guess in truth it\u2019s just as good as any other. But since … Continue reading Movie: When A Stranger Calls<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_bbp_topic_count":0,"_bbp_reply_count":0,"_bbp_total_topic_count":0,"_bbp_total_reply_count":0,"_bbp_voice_count":0,"_bbp_anonymous_reply_count":0,"_bbp_topic_count_hidden":0,"_bbp_reply_count_hidden":0,"_bbp_forum_subforum_count":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-566","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-movies"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/darkestlight.org\/b\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/566","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/darkestlight.org\/b\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/darkestlight.org\/b\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/darkestlight.org\/b\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/darkestlight.org\/b\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=566"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/darkestlight.org\/b\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/566\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":570,"href":"https:\/\/darkestlight.org\/b\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/566\/revisions\/570"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/darkestlight.org\/b\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=566"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/darkestlight.org\/b\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=566"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/darkestlight.org\/b\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=566"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}