Charity's Place.com

WHEN A STRANGER CALLS

REVIEWED BY CHARITY BISHOP

Our rating: 4 out of 5

Because of: scenes of intense terror, brief violence

Rated:

Have you ever been alone in the house at night and gotten the creeps? The ice fell down into the slot in the refrigerator, or the fan in the attic kicked on, and all of your nerves were strung tighter than a bow string? That is pretty much the emotion compelling When a Stranger Calls, one of those unique thrillers that Hitchcock would be proud of, because it plays with your emotions rather than sending you through a series of visual shocks.

Sixteen years old and just grounded for going over the minutes on her cell phone, Jill Johnson (Camilla Belle) is dealing with the mundane of every day life. Her best friend was just caught kissing with her boyfriend, and the two are not talking. To further complicate issues, her parents want her to pay every cent of overcharges back, and her dad lines her up with a babysitting job out in the country. The house is spacious and magnificent, built in the late seventies with eccentric little nooks and crannies, and a glass house of finches in the center. It belongs to the elegant Mr. and Mrs. Mandrakis (Derek de Lint, Kate Jennings Grant), wealthy through the profits of his successful medical practice. The couple is going to dinner and a movie in the local town and should be back by midnight.

On their way out, Mrs. Mandrakis shows her how to work the security system, and extends the invitation for Jill to help herself to anything that she needs. The two children, getting over the flu, are peacefully asleep upstairs. Several hours pass, and then the crank phone calls start. First it is only heavy breathing, then an menacing voice inquiring if she has checked on the children lately. Interspersed between these nerve-wracking calls are interactions with her friends, the interruption of the maid cleaning the bird cage, and an impending rain storm. Jill is just beginning to get seriously freaked out when the tension of the film erupts into one of the most successfully scary sequences I have ever sat through.

True, there are moments of stupidity in the early scenes when Jill is attempting to convince herself it's just a prank, and a few inconsistencies when all is said and done, but this movie delivers, and does so with only minor content concerns. There are two uses of the term a**holes, but no other profane language. Most of the rating is built up of suspense, but bodies are occasionally found, none of them gory. We see body bags being carried out to waiting vans, implying one victim (in the opening sequence) has been cut into pieces. Two people struggle, and Jill and the children are placed into peril in several scenes. A fire poker is driven through a man's hand. He grabs a woman by the hair, forcing her to rip it out in order to escape.

Everything about this movie hits all the right scare-nerves, from the opening scene (police investigating what is implied to be a particularly gory murder) to the final jarring conclusion. The audience sits there with a knot in their stomach, as influenced as the creepy, quiet old house as Jill is. You grow to hate the ringing of the phone as much as she does. I am very fond of films that use psychology to mess with you rather than throwing you at bloodied corpses or mangled faces pressed against the glass. When a Stranger Calls is just this kind of film, genuinely scary because it's believable ... everyone has been alone in a house at night, and for a babysitter, this is their worst nightmare. Just don't watch it at night alone, and pray the phone doesn't ring at some point during the film. You might think twice about answering it.