When a Stranger Calls (2006)

What’s the Story?

Based on a well-known 1979 stalker film, WHEN A STRANGER CALLS centers on teenaged babysitter Jill (Camilla Belle), who is left in charge of two young children. Jill spends most of her time on the phone, talking to her friend Scarlet (Tessa Thompson) or estranged boyfriend Bobby (Brian Geraghty), both at the annual "bonfire party," some distance from the house. The focus of these calls is whether or not Jill will forgive Bobby for kissing her "best friend" Tiffany (Katie Cassidy), while he and Tiffany were drunk on tequila. In between these melodramatic exchanges, Jill takes repeated heavy-breathing calls from the "stranger" (Tommy Flanagan), who gradually reveals that he is aware of her actions and, in the yuckiest moment, exclaims that he wants her "blood all over me." Jill's efforts to rescue the children are heroic and even clever. The stranger stalks them throughout the multi-floored and big-windowed house.

Is It Any Good?

Using familiar camera tricks and scary shadows, When a Stranger Calls puts well-adjusted high school track team member and babysitter Jill in an isolated house, then assaults her with howling wind, an intermittently working alarm system, heavy-breathing phone calls, and a black cat jumping out of corners. Some 83 minutes after its start, the film ends, with no point or development in evidence.

The stranger's eventual appearance doesn't even offer further insight into Jill or the film's point. An implacable and big-eared silhouette, he pursues his victims until he doesn't. The film climaxes a couple of times, including a nightmare sequence that seems designed to challenge Jill's sanity. But like most everything in When a Stranger Calls, this challenge is unsupported by anything else. And so it hangs, disconnected and clichéd.