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| Director
: |
Simon West
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| Starring
: |
Camilla Belle |
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| The plot of
When
a Stranger Calls |
During an otherwise routine babysitting gig, a
high-school student (Belle) is harassed by an
increasingly threatening prank caller. |
When a
Stranger Calls Review
|
Review by Brian
Orndorf:
Jill Johnson (Camilla
Belle) is a teenager looking for a little extra money
through babysitting to pay her extravagant cell phone
bills. Taking a job for a rich couple in their luxurious,
isolated home, Jill settles in for an easy evening in
a cavernous location. Trouble arrives with a seemingly
prank phone call that urges Jill "to check the
children." What starts as harmless fun soon erupts
into violence, with Jill fighting for her life against
a mysterious killer in unfamiliar surroundings.Not surprisingly,
"When a Stranger Calls" is a remake, this
time of a 1979 chiller that starred Carol Kane. The
story is a simple exercise in suspense filmmaking, and
the producers have updated the script to include more
modern touches, since the world of telephones hasn't
been all that frightening since Bush Sr. was in office.
One might even suggest that this idea has been rendered
obsolete in an era of caller ID and "star 69..more..
Review By Walter Chaw:
There's nothing patently, obviously offensive about
Simon West's abominable remake of the already awful
"thriller" When a Stranger Calls: it's neither
misogynistic nor racist nor really anything more than
exactly what you'd expect from a project like this,
dumped as it has been in the wasteland of another early-February.
It's so studiedly inoffensive, in fact, that you could
take an elderly nun to it and there would be nary a
flutter in her rigidly tender sensibilities. It tittles
no ates, manufactures no suspense, and no one in a packed
audience of four-hundred folks at the preview screening
rustled an inch when the cat--not once, but twice--provided
the false jump before the "real" one, though
I confess the reason for that might be that by the time
West and company get around to actually having something
happen, most anyone with any kind of sense is asleep
or halfway home. I've failed to mention that it's acted
by heavy-browed lead Camilla Belle (as babysitter Johnson,
Jill Johnson) like a toy robot with her key only half-wound.
Were she to have run out of juice negotiating a wall
and leaned there motionless, I wouldn't have batted
an eyelash..More..
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