When this stranger calls, hang up, because he’s got nothing to say.
Simon West’s When a Stranger Calls is based on the premise of the 1979 suspense film in which a babysitter receiving menacing calls learns her tormentor is in the house.
It’s definitely a chilling scenario, but hardly one that can play out for a full 95 minutes without some very careful plotting.
Eventually maniac and babysitter will have to meet, so it’s up to writer Jake Wade Wall and director West to dream up as many clever ways to keep them apart.
To this end they bring in two additional vulnerable female characters.
There’s the live-in maid, Rosa (Rosine Hatem) and a boozy high school student (Tessa Thompson) and you know the moment they enter frame they’re not long for this world.
That leaves Jill Johnson (Camilla Belle) to carry the suspense on her frail, inexperienced shoulders.
West, whose credits include Con Air, Lara Croft: Tomb Raider and The General’s Daughter, claims he was inspired by the 1967 thriller Wait Until Dark which saw a blind Audrey Hepburn dodging a menacing Alan Arkin.
The reason audiences were so invested with Hepburn’s plight in Wait Until Dark was the screenplay let us into her life.
We knew who this woman was.
All we know about Jill in When a Stranger Calls is she caught her jock boyfriend kissing one of her best friends and Jill’s parents are punishing her for an outrageous cell phone bill.
That’s hardly enough for us to care about her other than no human being ever deserves to be menaced by a drooling psychopath.
Belle’s Jill is little more than a caricature of countless youth oriented slasher films.
She’s the sexy girl wearing tight clothing who becomes the prey of an unseen or masked madman.
It makes you wish the owners of that magnificent home had neglected to pay the phone bill. It would have saved us all a lot of time.
