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DVD Details
- Rated: PG-13
- Closed captioning available
- Run Time: 1 hours, 23 minutes
- Video: Color
- Encoding: Region 1 (USA & Canada)
- Released: May 16, 2006
- Originally Released: 2006
- Label: Sony Pictures
Performers, Cast and Crew:
Starring | Camilla Belle | |
Performer: | Tommy Flanagan, Clark Gregg, Derek de Lint, David Denman, Madeleine Carroll & Steve Eastin | |
Directed by | Simon West | |
Edited by | Jeff Betancourt | |
Screenwriting by | Jake Wade Wall | |
Composition by | Jim Dooley | |
Produced by | John Davis & Wyck Godfrey | |
Director of Photography: | Peter Menzies, Jr. | |
Voice: | Lance Henriksen |
Entertainment Reviews:
Rating: 2/5 --
While teen chillers tend to be exercises in extreme dullness, at least director Simon West tries to wring some suspense out of the scenes here.
Full Review
RTÉ (Ireland)
If you've seen either Black Christmas or Halloween, there's nothing new here: the hyped-up score keeps telling us we ought to be scared, but the suspense feels mechanical and fake.
Full Review
Time Out
This version is a thin, protracted study in shifting Hollywood strategies.
Village Voice
Rating: 2/5 --
You know a horror movie's in trouble when the fake scares outweigh the real ones.
Full Review
BBC.com
Rating: 1.5/5 --
The film is not quite suspense-free, but almost. When finding a dead body underwater isn't scary, something is very wrong.
New York Times
Rating: 2/5 --
Loud, noisy, flashy but too rarely chilling.
Full Review
Empire Magazine
It's a safe dumb film for safe dumb audiences.
Full Review
Cinema Crazed
Product Description:
A slick remake of the 1979 original, Simon West's WHEN A STRANGER CALLS is a contemporary update of a well-known suburban legend. When 16-year-old Jill (newcomer Camilla Belle in the part originally played by Carol Kane) exceeds her cell phone minutes, her parents force her to spend the night babysitting instead of attending a huge bonfire bash. As Jill's father drives her to Dr. Mandrakis's house for the evening, we are given the sense from the long drive, spooky music, and winding roads, that the home is literally at the end of the Earth. Perched over the edge of a steamy lake, the mansion-like structure is made entirely of dark wood and glass. With an arboretum built into its center, the palatial home feels both Zen-like and forbidding. With the children already asleep, Jill spends the first hour indulging in secret babysitter pleasures like snooping and trying on Mrs. Mandrakis's jewelry. Without a cell phone or car, and all her friends' phones out of range, Jill is particularly isolated--the perfect victim for a psychopath on the loose. As she begins to get calls from a heavy-breathing stranger, what at first seems like a prank slowly becomes a real threat, creating a panic-filled evening that's any babysitter's nightmare. Using modern-day luxuries like caller ID, security alarm systems, and motion-sensor lights to its advantage, the film plays with themes of technology and wealth, pondering how much protection they actually provide. Clearly targeted at a teenage audience, the PG-13-rated film contains relatively little violence (lacking some of the graphic scenes that most people remember the original by), and instead uses unfamiliar spaces and a sense of the unknown to keep audiences scared.