LogFAQs > #945471095

I'm definitely going to branch out to some foreign horror here soon.

DAY 4.1: When A Strange Calls (2006)
On Hulu

I'm just going to keep this short. Nothing happens in this godforsaken film. I almost turned it off. There is absolutely nothing redeeming about this movie at all.

It's about a girl who babysits for a family and a stranger keeps calling the phone to troll her but she thinks the person is inside the house.

I never saw this when it came out and watching it now, I can't imagine even enjoying it 14 years ago. This movie is boring and has no even halfway decent scares in it, and it spends so much of the movie with her finding NOTHING HAPPENING. It's one thing if something actually creepy happens and the stranger is doing something, but most of this movie is NOTHING HAPPENING.

And this movie has some awful direction too. When she first finds out a killer can see her, the girl is looking around with so many camera cuts and it's so campy and stupid you can't take it seriously. There's a freaking ice dispenser jump scare and they reveal it by putting a camera in the fridge behind the ice dispenser. Come on.

And all of this wouldn't have been so bad if they had any sort of development for this girl to overcome personally. But she doesn't. So it's just... this girl just being creeped out for an hour straight.

And the actress who plays the lead, Camilla Belle, is the worst. What's worse than when you have a character with no personality? You give her an actress who, I swear to you, they must have pulled from those horrible D-Grade SyFy Direct to Video movies. And they put her as the lead in this film. But why? Who did she impress to get this job? She's just so wooden it's astonishing. There are so many actors and actresses in this movie that actually went ahead with pretty decent acting careers and she ended up not very successful, for obvious reasons.

Don't watch this movie. It sucks. I actually considered turning it off and then eventually almost fell asleep. This might actually be the worst remake to a horror movie ever. I can't think of one that could possibly be worse. I give it half a point for Katie Cassidy showing early acting chops as the only entertaining character that gets more than 1 minute screentime (of which there are like 3 characters like that total). I could write forever about the other issues this movie has but it's a waste of time. It's just abhorrent.

Rating: 0.5/10

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