Product Details

• Actors: Camilla Belle, Tommy Flanagan, Katie Cassidy, Tessa Thompson, Brian Geraghty
• Directors: Simon West
• Format: Full Screen, Closed-captioned, Color
• Language: English (Dolby Digital 5.1), French (Dolby Digital 5.1)
• Subtitles: English, French
• Dubbed: French
• Region: Region 1 encoding (US and Canada only)
  PLEASE NOTE: Some Region 1 DVDs may contain Regional Coding Enhancement (RCE). Some, but not all, of our international customers have had problems playing these enhanced discs on what are called "region-free" DVD players. For more information on RCE, click .
• Aspect Ratio: 1.33:1
• Number of discs: 1
• Rated: PG-13 (Parental Guidance Suggested)
• Studio: Sony Pictures Home Entertainment
• DVD Release Date: May 16, 2006
• Run Time: 87 minutes
• Average Customer Review: 3.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (176 customer reviews)
• ASIN: B000F6IOAM
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #21,310 in Movies & TV (See Top 100 in Movies & TV)
• Learn more about "When a Stranger Calls" on IMDb

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com

The smartest thing about the remake of When a Stranger Calls is that it strips the original 1979 version to its bare essentials as a primal exercise in stormy-night terror. While taking the original film's suspenseful first act and expanding it into an 87-minute cat-and-mouse game, screenwriter Jake Wade Wall adds a few clever updates involving cellphones and home-security services, as well as the maze-like menace of a lavish modern home that serves as the setting for mayhem when cute teenager Jill (Camilla Belle, in the role originated by Carol Kane) takes on a babysitting job that she may live to regret. Someone is stalking her in the big, expensive glass palace that her employers call home (a splendid set designed by Jon Gary Steele), and that creepy voice on the phone (belonging to Lance Henriksen, master of doom-laden threat) should've been her first clue to grab the pair of terrified kids she's supposed to be protecting and leave the house ASAP. But no, the script, the overwrought score, and the uninspired direction of Simon West (Con-Air, Lara Croft: Tomb Raider) insist that poor Jill be put through a Halloween-like night from hell, complete with a black cat as an omen of nasty things to come. Kudos to Wall and West for attempting to generate horror through suggestion (by keeping the homicidal stalker mostly off-screen), but let's face it: the original film is hardly a classic (its TV-movie sequel, When a Stranger Calls Back, is considerably better), and the remake takes too long to yield minimal rewards. Maybe Jill should've just unplugged the phone. --Jeff Shannon

Product Description

To Jill Johnson, it was the perfect babysitting job. The parents were away. The fridge was stocked. The children were tucked into bed. But then the phone rings and an ominous voice asks, 'Have you checked the children?' Locked in with the lights out and the curtains drawn, a panicky Jill phones the police, who trace the calls ' only to inform her they're coming from inside the house. And as the frightened teenager goes upstairs to check on the children, Jill's quiet night of babysitting is about to turn into a nerve-shattering nightmare of suspense, horror and dread.

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

34 of 42 people found the following review helpful

1.0 out of 5 stars Hang Up On This Stranger--A Thriller As Tedious As An Incessant Busy Signal November 29, 2006

By K. Harris HALL OF FAMETOP 10 REVIEWER

Format:DVD

Another in a long line of remakes, "When A Stranger Calls" tells the story of a young baby-sitter and her two charges tormented by a madman. This is your standard omnipresent evildoer--he can be anywhere at anytime with no basis in logic. In fact, one scene involving the guest house--he's practically in two places at once! Apparently he stalks young women (so the film tells us)--however this baby-sitter was hired at the last minute, so I'm not sure how he targeted this house in the middle of nowhere and knew the owners would be going out. Quite frankly, with a live-in maid--I'm not quite sure why they hired a baby-sitter they didn't know to sit their kids who were already fast asleep. Rosa, the maid, seemed nice enough--surely she wouldn't have minded the extra bit of bother. But let's not dwell.

In truth, there's nothing wrong with the idea of remaking "When A Stranger Calls." While I'm not a huge fan of remakes, the original movie certainly had ample opportunities for improvement. All anyone remembers from the Carol Kane film are the first twenty minutes. But those twenty minutes are classic suspense and hugely effective. Unfortunately, the remainder of the film devolved into a rather routine police procedural. This updating sought to isolate the scenario from the beginning of that movie and expand it to feature length. However, that becomes a little trickier when technology has improved so vastly in the last 25 years. Home phones are almost obsolete these days in the era of cell phones, Internet, text messages, etc.--not to mention features on the phone like Caller ID and Blocking.

But anyway, we'll set all that aside for now. The technological improbability is the least of this film's issues. More to the forefront is a complete lack of originality. Seriously this movie is about 30 minutes of one sided telephone conversations, 30 minutes of being frightened in dark rooms by innocuous sounds, 15 minutes of unnecessary and unsuccessful character development, and 15 minutes of confrontation. The telephone interchanges are so tedious--she must answer the phone 40 times and never once does someone just say "Hi" right off the bat. The creeping around in the dark is so familiar--the cat scares her on more than one occasion (the most overused thriller cliche in existence). When we get to the big confrontation, it's absolutely routine. No one is required to be ingenious, heroic, or otherwise noteworthy--it's all run and cry. The kids are particularly hysterical--they don't have one line in the film, they just blubber.

Absolutely unnecessary in every way, this isn't even the least bit fun. Camilla Belle is an interesting actress (with interesting eyebrows). She has chosen fascinating roles before--I particularly liked "The Ballad of Jack and Rose." I only hope she doesn't get caught in the bad horror movie cycle many other young actors seem to be trapped in. Pass this one up. KGHarris, 11/06.

21 of 28 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Whatever You Do, Don't Answer The Phone, While watching this movie! April 4, 2006

A Kid's Review

Format:DVD

Typical teen Jill Johnson has gone over her mobile phone bill and must make up the money to pay for it, thus why she baby sits for a rich family. Everything's go perfectly, the kids in bed, the alarm system activated... She settles down for a boring night...... But then... The phone rings.... A series of anonymous terrifying phone calls escalate until the stranger asks her "Have you checked the children lately?"

The events that unfold are truly terrifying....

This Film Is.... Absolutely amazing!!!!!

This would have to be without a doubt the best horror movie I have seen in a long time, the movies success is thanks to the amazing brunette Camilla Belle who plays the protagonist Jill Johnson (The Patriot), she gives an outstanding performance of the terrified victim. A refreshing change from the cliché blonde victim.

Based on one of the scariest of all urban legends 'The Babysitter and the man upstairs" this film is extremely suspenseful and will have you on the edge of your seat until the closing credits and last SURPRISE!

I extremely recommend this film to everyone, it's scary without making you feel sick at how scary it was. Amazing time and effort went into making it and this can be seen through extravagant surroundings (the house she baby sits at is UNBELIEVABLE!)and lighting is equally brilliant.

Plenty of scares and thrills in this!!!! Belle's acting is brilliant and your yearning for her to be ok...

Sit back and enjoy....

But whatever you do, DON'T ANSWER THE PHONE!

8 of 10 people found the following review helpful

1.0 out of 5 stars When a Stranger Calls -- Yet Another Remake August 26, 2006

By James Choma VINE™ VOICE

Format:DVD

"The phone calls are coming from inside the house!" I don't think I ruined the movie for anyone, because that line of dialog was used in the 1979 original. Yes, what we have here is yet another remake that comes nowhere near the original in quality, and shows Hollywood's well of creativity has certainly run dry.

Why, oh, why didn't I use Hollywood's reasoning when I did my highschool and college papers? I could have simply copied my friends' original term papers and called it an updated remake. It certainly would have made my life easier, but my conscience reminded me that cutting corners in such a way would only reinforce that I couldn't think for myself.

And so we have today's Hollywood: Why bother with putting forth any effort? Let's just shamelessly take a classic and do it again for a new generation! Yeah! It'll me new to the teen age audiences who we assume are too dense to know about the original, right? And we'll gleefully take their money and reward them with a subpar "update" on the original.

Here's the plot of the updated version. Jill Johnson gets in trouble for going 800 minutes over on the family's cell phone share plan. Her punishment? Babysitting.

So to fufill her punishment, grumpy Dad takes his daughter over to the home of the wealthy parents to watch their presumably wild kids, currently sick with the flu. She gets the run of the house and is told to disregard any noise upstairs because it's Rosa the maid.

The parents leave and our generic heroine starts looking around the house. Chester the housecat provides a few false scares, as does Rosa, the noisy maid.

A few phone calls come in, but it's Jill's friends calling to prank her. Besides these pesky phone calls, disposable friend #1 shows up to razz Jill about her babysitting job, and how it was no big deal that she kissed the guy Jill likes.

Whatever.

Disposable friend #1 somehow managed to make it through the locked front gate, as well as the alarm system, yet she's not crafty enough to hold onto her keys or drive over a stick blocking the once easily accessed gate. Here she meets her end, and the world is a sadder place.

More false scares ensure, the phone calls continue, and Jill realizes that the calls are coming from within the house. Then the caller shows up and chases Jill and the kids all over the house, into the pond, into the guest house, and back through the main house.

It turns out that the caller is some serial killer that managed to target this high end neighborhood. What's his background and his motivation? They don't tell us, and I guess it really doesn't matter anyhow.

If memory serves, Jill slams a fireplace poker into his hand, trapping him in the living room. The police show up and take him away.

My time would have been better spent watching a dung beetle roll a turd for an hour and a half. I pray to all the is holy that there is never, ever a sequel to this waste of time.