Take a look at the movies out right now: 'Big Momma's House 2,' 'Underworld: Evolution,' 'Annapolis,' 'Tristan and Isolde,' and 'Last Holiday.' This is the kind of 'entertainment' Hollywood has to offer during the dreary months of January and February, after the winter's holiday features come out, and well before pre-summer blockbusters arrive. The typical movie comes in four varieties'Oscar nominee, sequel, remake and piece of shit'or in various combinations of these.
Simon West's 'When a Stranger Calls' is one of those combinations, a remake of a painfully inept 1979 horror film, and it seems like it has been crafted solely to satisfy one particularly underrepresented demographic: 12-year-old girls who have never seen a movie before.
There must be a lot of them, because 'When a Stranger Calls' managed to hit the No. 1 spot at the box office this weekend with a disheartening $22 million gross. 'When a Stranger Calls' may be the most stillborn remake ever made, because any attempt at deriving suspense or tension is based on what is, by now, the most blatant and despised horror film clich?? in existence.
The creepy, psychotic, anonymous caller (who's actually inside the house!) has been beaten to death since the '70s by not only most genuine slasher films, but by insidious satires ('Scream') and goofy parodies of those satires ('Scary Movie'). In spite of this, West and company have decided to feebly give this well-worn plot another kick.
Camilla Belle is Jill Johnson, a sulky teen complete with her share of boy problems, a harem of twittering pals and a concerned father who took away her cell phone. She is hired as a last-minute babysitter for a filthy-rich family with a lakeside resort for a home. It seems like a dream job: the kids remain asleep upstairs, the house is gorgeous, and, oh my God, can you say 'unlimited phone privileges'?! West spends an unbelievably long time setting up this scenario, and most of the movie has Jill talking on the phone and exploring the gargantuan house. Finally, the stranger comes a-calling in the form of Lance Henriksen's raspy baritone, and even then, Jill doesn't do anything about it.
Eventually cops, surprise visitors, and yes, jumpy red-herring cats figure into what has to be the most outdated game of cat-and-mouse to hit the big screen in years. The writing is oppressively pedestrian and brazenly obvious; some of Jill's moronic actions do not even meet the miniscule expectations for a horror film.
It's an 83-minute compendium of interchangeably dull and nonsensical scenes, none of which have any semblance of realism or suspense. This is a horror film devoid of any of the genre's hallmarks'gore, nudity, humor'and chock full of barefaced, devout unoriginality.
Belle, who slightly impressed in 'The Ballad of Jack and Rose,' is visibly disinterested. Someone must have fixed her a roofie colada before filming, because her voice never wavers more than a decibel from scene to scene, whether she's chastising her sexually wayward boyfriend (brace yourself, he kissed another girl) or being told that the stranger is actually inside the house.
West showed he could make fun, mindless films with 'Con Air,' but after 'The General's Daughter' and 'Lara Croft: Tomb Raider,' he revealed himself as a listless hack looking for an undeserved paycheck. 'When a Stranger Calls' is not a film, it's an aggressively redundant anachronism, and West pounds it home with dogged attention to each tiresome clich?? he exhumes. Less scary than 'Are You Afraid of the Dark?,' less edgy than the Disney Channel's 'High School Musical,' 'When a Stranger Calls' is the blandest PG-13 horror film of them all. This is one of the worst films ever made.
