DVD Reviews

When A Stranger Calls

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• Starring: Camilla Belle
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Teenager Jill (Belle) baby-sits two young children in a large modern house, twenty-odd minutes from civilisation. Alone in the house with the children asleep, she begins to receive nasty phone calls from a stalking stranger who apparently never saw Scream (thus doesn't appreciate the irony).This is a remake - albeit one of a largely unseen 70s slasher movie - and a handsomely-made "horror" movie from a director who cut his teeth in the Bruckheimer school of filmmaking (West directed Con Air).But while it's damned pretty to look at - and stylishly staged - it's ultimately an incredibly empty and somewhat pointless vessel. This is obviously a movie written around an idea; one that struggles to comprehensively fill out the eighty-odd minute running time. The original was no horror classic, but effective with a menacing atmosphere throughout. The script here, however, is pedestrian and unimaginative, making no effort to expand on the protagonist's motives. It provides us with a lame set-up where we (kinda) see the killer pick off his last victim in such an apparently disgusting and vile manner that the PG-13 ratting forbids us to even glimpse it. But imagining is scarier, right? Yeah right - just like imagining this isn't a piece of crap. Director West obviously made Stranger to pay the bills, having not directed a flick since the badly-received Tomb Raider; and whilst tackling a new genre wasn't a bad idea, it's a fruitless exercise when the set-up and screenplay is over simplified to the point of lobotomisation. I'm giving this two stars (and not one) for two reasons. One, its very nicely shot with a couple of scenes actually managing to deliver a smidgen of suspense; and two, the recently released and god awful Stay Alive just lowered the bar. Another poor man's Scream - very poor.

Review by Mike Sheridan