Adding another notch onto the belt of unnecessary remakes is When A Stranger Calls, a complete waste of time that fails to provide any merit from beginning to end. If it ain't broke don't fix it is a pretty good rule to go by. Not if it's kinda loose, rip it apart and shred it, considering I didn't even find the original to be that amazing either.
When A Stranger Calls is a pretty basic story based on the classic urban legends about babysitters and the stalkers that pursue them. Hot young thing (Camilla Belle) is babysitting children and is stalked by a stranger who just happens to be making all of his calls from inside the same house where she's at. Providing character names for movies like this is quite pointless considering they might as well all have been named Jane Doe.
Keeping a movie at a PG-13 rating can sometimes be a challenge for movies to provide the horror without all the guts and gore that R-rated movies provide. But it has been done, Hell, just look at movies like The Others, The Ring, The Sixth Sense, The Skeleton Key, etc. So there's not really much justification for the complete lack of pulse in When A Stranger Calls. Not only do you not see any of the murders (you see a tiny bit of aftermath), but you don't see any sign that indicates this movie was supposed to be intended as a horror film. Hell, there was scarier shit in Scary Movie, and that at least had the decency to be funny as well. Nothing in When A Stranger Calls is remotely original, unpredictable, or chilling. It's as stale and terrifying as expired milk.
And here's another thing that pisses me off about movies like this. They completely blow from beginning to end without any entertainment or reason to keep going, but to make matters WORSE, they throw on some obligatory, thrown together ending to insinuate that a possible sequel could be on the way. And what a terrible signal that sends out.
0/4
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