When A Stranger Calls

I know this film is old news now, but it's been on my list of movies to view ever since Mr. Neville recommended it to me and today I finally got around to watching it. All I can say is, wow! This film was everything I expected and more!

The film is a remake of a 1979 film, however, with obvious updates to ensure that today's modern teenagers would be able to relate to the heroine Jill Johnson (Camilla Belle). The plot of the film is very simple and does not require much exposition or logical sense, and as such the film delivers on this as well. Jill Johnson is grounded for going over her minutes on her cell phone and therefore will not be able to attend the big bonfire where apparently the entire high school travels to a local hillt0p location which manages to kill every student's cell phone signal and burns a huge straw effigy in some sort of voodoo ritual where underage drinking and streaking are acceptable and so is the high school marching band prancing around playing. Instead, Jill babysits for a the family of a doctor and begins receiving strange calls. These strange calls quickly evolve from heavy breathing to statements which quickly inform Jill she is being watched and shortly thereafter letting her know her life is in danger.

The film opens with a brilliant scene of quick cuts of a carnival (because everyone knows carnivals are essential for the teen-horror genre since they're the scariest places ever) together with a random house that ends in a scream. A quick scene of a police investigation informs the audience that the people in the house were murdered most horrifically. The great thing about this opening sequence, however, is that we don't really care about them as they're never mentioned again, none of the police investigators are heard from or seen again, and the town where Jill Johnson lives is 125 miles away (yes, the film tells you that exact number).

After the opening sequence, the audience discovers that Jill's best friend Tiffany kissed her boyfriend and now they are fighting which is the cause for Jill going over her cell phone minutes. Might I interject, at this point, that the film is full of brilliant, humorous little interchanges and quips. Two of these specifically stick out in my mind. The first occurs between a police officer and a random investigator in the beginning, which goes something like this:
Policeman: "Hey Hanz, growin' a beard."
Police Investigator: "Yes, I am."
Policeman: "It makes you look um..."
Police Investigator: "Old and fat, I know I've heard."

The other occurs during the scenes in the high school between Jill and her friend Scarlet.
Scarlet: "Guys, this is so high school."
Jill: "Scarlet we're in high school."

Brilliant! Anyway, after the audience receives a brilliant 10 minutes of exposition which prove to be completely worthless they receive a 15 minute tour of one of the most expensive houses with the absolute poorest lighting possible. For the rest of the film, the audience is treated to viewing 45 minutes of viewing Jill sitting on the couch from different angles, 35 minutes of Jill slowly creeping through dark corridors (which director Simon West ensured were shot with the proper lenses to create the illusion they were miles long), and 5 minutes of unimpressive action towards the end. Through out this whole film, the entire soundtrack consists of random ambient noises, heavy breathing, and phone static.

I must say, however, that Jill is a mighty interesting character to examine. At the beginning she is very upset that Tiffany kissed her boyfriend, mad enough that she won't even talk to her. Hours later as she begins to get harassed, however, it takes only a single sentence from Tiffany to change her mind and reconcile them. Jill manages to continue these schizophrenic episodes through out the film, as she goes from recoiling in horror at every noise in the house to attempting to bait the stalker into a conversation which must last for 60 seconds in a matter of minutes. Through out her stay in the house she is consistently feared for her life, however, she is willing to slink through the shadows in attempt to discover her pursuer and at one time is even willing to run through the stormy night in her t-shirt and jeans wielding a phone, heavy metal object (I couldn't see what since the lighting was too poor) and a flashlight.

Yes, this film had everything I expected and more. It managed to avoid any violence altogether and had absolutely no T&A (clothed or not) which allowed to it to maintain its precious PG-13 rating which is so hard to achieve today. I truly believed that absolutely nothing would happen in this film and I was not let down, absolutely nothing happened.

This film is exemplary in its ability to rank as one of the absolute worst teen horror/thriller flicks I have ever seen in my entire life. It managed to take all the worst parts of the teen horror genre formula and twist them into something that I did not think was even possible. The ending could not have wrapped up this film more spectacularly. This is one of those films that is able to be crowned "so bad it's good" to such an extreme that I am actually on my way over to Best Buy now to pick it up on DVD because I honestly feel that any fan of horror films or film in general as an art ought to own this.