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Rish's Reviews
I'm no fan of 1979's When A Stranger Calls. It took one of the most effective--not to mention scariest--urban legends, and totally botched it.
Well, here we are, a couple of decades later, and they've remade it.
Basically, there's a psycho who likes to call young women and scare them on the phone. Oh, and kill them. When Jill gets a babysitting gig in a big, expensive house with windows instead of walls, her phone just starts ringing off the hook. I didn't see any trailers, but I saw the TV spot, and it gave away the "big twist" right there. I feel bad for anybody that might have ruined it for.
Why would she keep answering the phone, I wonder.
Perhaps learning a little from the "failure" of the original (I say failure, but hey, it was successful enough to spawn two sequels and this remake, so it must not have failed hard), this film spends its entire length telling the story of the babysitter getting the spooky phone calls (rather than just prologuing with it, like the old one did). It was well lit and shot, from Bruckheimer alumnus Simon West. There were some semi-effective jumps (what was up with that completely deranged statue?), and when the killer was finally revealed, a couple of audience members screamed.
It's more silly than scary, but at least it's better than the original. Even so, the whole killer-menaces-teenager-on-the-telephone thing was done SO much better in Scream that I wonder why they even attempted it. Seriously, how could someone make this film in the deep, dark shadow of that 1996 masterwork, is beyond me. You can't tell me they haven't seen it, or weren't ripping it off, either. I mean, at one point, our heroine asks the killer-on-phone, "What do you want?" and he replies, "Your blood, all over me." Kevin Williamson must be rolling in his grave.
Once again, we've got a PG-13 horror film, and while that sometimes works (The Ring and Emily Rose and Grudge and Sixth Sense were all PG-13), it didn't in this case. The kills are sanitary and bloodless, the ending is cowardly, and of course the children are in no real danger (nor do they appear to be scared . . . you can see them scampering along, trying hard not to look at the camera, while the sounds of their screams are looped in), but hey, if it were any other way, that might shock someone. And nobody goes to horror movies to be shocked, right?
I didn't recognise the cast (except for the killer, who was in Gladiator and was Lance Henriksen on the phone). The girl (Camilla Belle), while pretty enough, was neither personable not likable in the slightest. She wasn't the dumbest horror movie character we've ever seen, but judging from the jeers she got in the audience for her behaviour, she may be the dumbest one of the 21st Century.
I used to consider myself something of a screenwriter, and I often said, "There's nothing wrong with a character talking to themselves to make a point. I mean, I talk to myself all the time." Now that I've seen this movie, with the girl saying things like, "The guesthouse?" and "He called the wrong phone!" I now know how wrong I was. Sorry, Uncle Jim, I guess I wasted that college money you left me after all.
The ending is completely ripped off that of Carrie, but not nearly as well (even so, I sort of like the girl's last line). As I said in my last rant against remakes, the suits behind this picture know damn well that no kid under twenty has seen Carrie (or if they have, they're hopin' it was the slick 21st Century remake, right?), and if they were bothered by the weak film or weak ending of the movie, audience members would be too late to warn anybody anyhow.
I shouldn't rant about a film like this, since it's pretty harmless, but I will anyway. About eighty percent of horror films are not screened for critics before they open, because a) they know Horror fans don't read reviews, b) they know Horror fans will go on opening weekend just because it's a horror film, and c) because if they let critics review it, they know they would get a terrible review. But I say, Why not make a GOOD horror movie? That way, you wouldn't have to worry about showing it to critics? Wouldn't it feel good to get a recommendation from Jeffrey Lyons or Peter Travers or the ghost of Gene Siskel? Well, the answer is that the suits don't care about anything other than that opening weekend. And I'm sure When A Stranger Calls 2006 will make back its production costs in the next day and a half. So, it doesn't matter what the critics say. And it matters even less what I say.
I'd Recommend It To: There's not much to recommend this film. Still, I'd rather see it again than the Carol Kane version.
Posted: February 6, 2006

Total Skulls: Incomplete

Sequel
Sequel setup
Rips off earlier film
Horror film showing on TV/in theater in movie
Future celebrity appears
Former celebrity appears
Bad title
Bad premise
Bad acting
Bad dialogue
Bad execution
MTV Editing
OTS
Girl unnecessarily gets naked
Wanton sex
Death associated with sex
Unfulfilled promise of nudity
Characters forget about threat
Secluded location
Power is cut
Phone lines are cut
Someone investigates a strange noise
Someone runs up stairs instead of going out front door
Camera is the killer
Victims cower in front of a window/door
Victim locks self in with killer
Victim running from killer inexplicably falls
Toilet stall scene
Shower/bath scene
Car stalls or won't start
Cat jumps out
Fake scare
Laughable scare
Stupid discovery of corpse
Dream sequence
Hallucination/Vision
No one believes only witness
Crazy, drunk, old man knows the truth
Warning goes unheeded
Music detracts from scene
Death in first five minutes
x years before/later
Flashback sequence
Dark and stormy night
Killer doesn't stay dead
Killer wears a mask
Killer is in closet
Killer is in car with victim
Villain is more sympathetic than heroes
Unscary villain/monster
Beheading
Blood fountain
Blood spatters - camera, wall, etc.
Poor death effect
Excessive gore
No one dies at all
Virgin survives
Geek/Nerd survives
Little kid lamely survives
Dog/Pet miraculously survives
Unresolved subplots
"It was all a dream" ending
Unbelievably happy ending
Unbelievably crappy ending
What the hell?