(Next time, sweetie, pay attention to the section in “Babysitter Training“ that talks about “Gigs You Should Definitely Turn Down“…)
CAST: Camilla Belle, Katie Cassidy, Tommy Flanagan, Derek De Lint, Clark Gregg, Kate Jennings Grant, Tessa Thompson, Brian Geraghty.
DIRECTOR: Simon West
WARNING: Some SPOILERS and one seriously dedicated - if also a little stupid - babysitter straight ahead.
When I was growing up, kids got punished for an entirely different set of crap that kids today get in trouble for. Some of the things me and my siblings got in hot water for (in order of frequency): (1) sassing our elders; (2) doing badly in school; (3) staying out too late; (3) sneaking ice cream out of the freezer (seriously); and (5) accidentally burning down an entire field with firecrackers stuck in water buffalo dung. I wish I were joking about that last one. But I’m not. Suffice it to say, if you’re going to plant firecrackers in water buffalo dung, make sure it’s not surrounded by dry grass. I didn’t see the sun for a month after that stunt. Goddamn, my Dad was pissed.
These days, the kind of things that teens get in trouble for is a completely different array of crap (no pun intended). Some of these things might include, but are not limited to, the following: (1) posting inappropriate pictures of themselves on their Facebook accounts; (2) going to websites they’re not supposed to be laying eyes on; and (3) busting the maximum limit of their minutes on their cellphones and therefore (4) racking up a bill so huge the Republicans may be tempted to come in and slash it in half. Meow.
Those last two bits (besides the Republicans part) is pivotal to our next review, the 2006 remake of the 1979 thriller semi-classic WHEN A STRANGER CALLS. Our heroine, Jill Johnson (Camilla Belle), has racked up a gargantuan cellphone bill trying to work out the bubble-gum love triangle between her, her friend Tiffany (Katie Cassidy), and Jill’s boyfriend Bobby (Brian Geraghty) - whom Tiffany has recently, shall we say, milked to the last drop. Slurp.
Anyhow, the price of a million “I can’t believe you fucked him” phone calls is a steep one. And Jill’s parents expect her pay every red cent on that bill herself. Hence, the shitty babysitting job that Jill finds herself in. The house is located, literally, in the middle of nowhere. At least it looks like Franklin Lloyd Wright designed the fucking thing. The way I see it, if you’re going to be stranded with two brats in the boonies, at least let the house be a really awesome one. Now, all Jill needs is another 1,238,342 babysitting jobs to be able earn enough money to pay off that phone bill.
Our story kicks off when Jill’s dad (Clark Gregg) drops her off at Fallingwater, er, the awesome house in the middle of nowhere. The rich couple whom she’s babysitting for, the Mandrakises (Derek DeLint and Kate Jennings Grant) barely have enough time to say “Hi, if you invite your boyfriend over please don’t fuck on our bed because the sheets are brand new, bye.” Oh, and they advise Jill that the children are already sleeping, and not to disturb them because it was apparently easier to get a crack-addicted chimpanzee to take a nap. And then they’re off, leaving Jill to wander around the house and wonder who she should screw to be able to live in such a grand place. Memo to Jill: the answer just walked out the door with his wife.
At any rate, Jill whiles away the evening by doing the following: (1) exploring the gargantuan house; (2) getting spooked by the sound of the refrigerator’s ice machine; (3) avoiding calls from both Bobby and Tiffany; and (4) trying to do her homework. No kidding. Who does homework these days? I didn’t even do back in the 80’s. Which would probably explain why I had to go to Summer School to pass Algebra. But whatevs…
Then Jill gets a call from some weirdo who asks her, “Have you checked the children?” To which she rightfully responds: “Mr. Mandrakis, I have not checked the children - but you can check me when you get home. Boy, can you ever check me.” Okay, kidding. She basically gets creeped out - and even more so when the guy calls back, like, a million times, asking the same thing: “Have you checked the children?”
Finally, scared (or annoyed) beyond belief, Jill calls the cops and begs them to put a trace on the call. After some hemming and hawwing, the cop on duty obliges - and tells Jill to keep the weirdo on the line longer next time so they can get a trace. She complies, basically chatting up the psycho on his favorite color, food, vacations spots, and sexual positions. Again, kidding. Still, she does manage to keep him on the line long enough to get a trace.
Unless you are not familiar with the popular urban legend called “The Killer Upstairs”, or the original WHEN A STRANGER CALLS, or the trailers for this film, you already know that the psycho has been in the house the whole time, calling from a second line upstairs, practically shaking his head in disbelief at Jill’s gullibility. Let’s just say that things get a whole lot more interesting from this point on. Thank. God.
And so begins what is basically an extending cat-and-mouse sequence between Jill and the killer through the house and the surrounding woods? Will she get away? Will she outsmart the killer? Or will he add her to his growing list of babysitter victims? What happens when Tiffany show up to make peace with Jill? Will she become a target, too? What about the kids? Are they okay? Or are they toast? Will Mr. and Mrs. Mandrakis shit a thousand bricks when they discover Jill and the killer have turned their house into an obstacle course?
I would be. The doorknobs of that place are worth more than some entire neighborhoods in South Seattle.
BUT, SERIOUSLY: In the wake of HALLOWEEN’s success in 1978, numerous films followed that used the “imperiled woman terrorized by a killer” premise to create thrills and chills. Among those, WHEN A STRANGER CALLS (1979) was a mild success. I write “mild” because the film is actually quite uneven. With the exception of its opening and closing scenes, everything else in between is actually fairly devoid of thrills. But the prologue and epilogue are master classes in suspense.
The first ten minutes and the last ten minutes of WHEN A STRANGER CALLS (1979) focus on Jill Johnson (Carol Kane), first as a babysitter, then later as an adult housewife with children of her own. In both cases, she is terrorized by a psychopathic killer (Tony Beckley). These sequences sing with rapidly building tension and simmering terror. The rest of the film dealt with a cop’s (Charles Durning) efforts to catch the killer - which were quite dull in comparison to Kane’s scenes.
WHEN A STRANGER CALLS (2006) takes the opening and ending of the original and stretches it out to feature-length. Does it succeed? Yes - and no. Yes, because the remake is better than the original, as a whole. No, because the original’s opening and closing scenes are more terrifying than the entire remake. I hope this makes sense. The bottom line is when you stretch a situation that was supposed to be no more than 15 minutes, at best, you start running into artificial reasons to pad the running time. This is something that happens all too much in the remake. There’s only so many times we can watch Jill wander around the dark house, hearing strange noises.
Also, when the killer’s presence is revealed, the ensuing chase/confrontation/stalking sequence is so protracted and redundant that it actually dispels some of the tension. This is partly because the killer is never sufficiently set-up a truly scary nemesis. He’s just a moderately threatening shadow that is almost mechanical at times. We never get the sense of flesh-and-blood psychopath - which is actually more terrifying than a superhuman automaton.
As the beleaguered heroine, Camilla Belle performs reasonably well. But, as with the quality of the original’s prologue and epilogue vs. the entire remake’s, Belle is not as affecting as Kane was in her considerably smaller role. You could actually feel Jill’s growing terror in the original film - and when she gets that phone call near the end that asks her, “Have you checked the children?” her sense of the past coming back to attack her is like a bomb dropping.
Bottom line: Belle is okay - but Kane is better. Which is essentially the way to describe WHEN A STRANGER CALLS ‘79 vs. WHEN A STRANGER CALLS ‘06.
