When a Stranger Calls (2006 film)

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When a Stranger Calls

Region 1 DVD Cover for When a Stranger Calls.
Directed by Simon West
Produced by John Davis
Wyck Godfrey
Ken Lemberger
Written by Jake Wade Wall
Starring Camilla Belle
Music by James Dooley
Cinematography Peter Menzies Jr.
Editing by Jeff Betancourt
Distributed by Screen Gems
Release date(s) February 3, 2006
Running time 100 min.
Language English
Budget $15 million
Gross revenue $66.9 million
Allmovie profile
IMDb profile

When a Stranger Calls is a 2006 remake of the 1979 film with the same name. In the film, baby-sitter Jill Johnson (Camilla Belle) receives increasingly threatening calls from a brutal serial killer who she first assumes is simply a juvenile prankster.


Contents

[edit] Plot Summary

In the opening scene of the movie, there is a carnival going on outside of someone's house. The girl inside is obviously baby sitting. While the carnival goes on, the phone rings. (You never see inside of the house until the police investigate, and so the whole time you only see shadows and hear the voices while the carnival goes on.) The girl answers, and he asks what her name is. "Stacey" she replies. "Who is this?" The camera shows a window with the light off, and suddenly the lights turn on and you see a shadow of a man attack. There are screams, but because of the carnival nobody can hear them.

The next day, the police arrive and investigate the scene and find a total of four bodies, three children and the babysitter, mutilated horribly. A detective asks what the murder weapon was to which an officer responds "There wasn't one." The detective goes into the children's room to see what's left of the victims. All the audience sees is the detective's disgusted face as faint children screams and blood gushing sounds are heard, implying that the three children and babysitter were literally ripped to pieces by the killer with his bare hands.

Later, young Jill Johnson is being punished by her parents after going over her cell phone minutes. She is not allowed to drive or use her cell phone. She is hired to baby-sit for a couple. After showing her around, the children's parents leave, and Jill feels she can mind herself, knowing the kids are upstairs recovering from the flu. Now that she's alone she snoops around the house until she hears a loud bang.

Jill believes it's simply Rosa, the live-in maid, or Dr. Mandrakis returning to get something, so she ignores the noise. She sits down and reaches for the phone. Just before she picks it up, it rings. There is just heavy breathing on the other end of the phone. After a while Jill hears the line go dead and she hangs up. She notices Rosa is no longer feeding the birds in the atrium.

Jill gets more phone calls only to realize the person calling can see her. Then, he says the legendary line, "Have you checked the children?" Jill goes upstairs and checks on the children. Once she sees that they are ok, she goes back downstairs. As she reaches the bottom of the stairs, the phone rings. She answers it and hears the person say, "How were the children?" She calls the police, but they say unless he's making a real threat to her they can't do anything. Finally they agree to trace the call. When she's done on the phone, she sees someone inside the guest house near the main house. She thinks it is Todd (the father's older son) or Rosa and decides to go there. Jill takes a flashlight and a candle stick as a weapon and runs to the guest house. She enters and finds the room empty, but when she looks out of the window, she sees a light go on in the children's room. She races back to the house and goes up to the third floor to Rosa's room. She finds this empty too, with the shower turned on in Rosa's bathroom. As she stands there, the police call to warn Jill that they have traced the call, and that the caller is somewhere inside the house. Suddenly she hears a phone ring and wearily turns around, and she is overwhelmed with sadness and fright as she finds out that it is her friend Tiffany's (who joined her at the house earlier in the night) cell phone ringing. Finding Tiffany dead in Rosa's bathroom, Jill goes downstairs to get the two children. She finds them in a toy chest in a small bedroom. When they're about to leave the bedroom, Jill sees the stranger on top of a rafter in their open wooden ceiling.

Jill and the children run inside the bathroom as the stranger jumps from the ceiling. Jill ties the door handle to a hook on the wall and locks themselves in. The stranger tries to get in the room as Jill and the kids make an escape to the indoor glass shielded water garden/atrium. The stranger makes it downstairs again and attacks Jill, who is hiding underwater. When the children run to the main door, they are too small to unlock it. Jill finds Rosa's dead body in the water. She also traps the man in the atrium (ripping some of her hair out in the process) and finds the kids in the fireplace. They all run for the door, but the stranger breaks out and chases after them. The kids make it out, but Jill is pulled back inside. She fights the stranger, and eventually stabs his hand with a fire poker, pinning him to the floor. She manages to escape, and runs into the arms of a police officer, who has just arrived. While she is leaving to go to the hospital she sees the killer in a police cruiser. They look at each other and the cruiser drives away. The police say they will have 4 officers on him around the clock but Jill simply replies "That's not enough." The audience learns that the killer is responsible for the murders of 15 people, most of them being young women and children. News reports state that the police are looking for the links between the victims and that the killer's identity is unknown at this point.

Later, as Jill is recovering in the hospital, she finds herself alone with a ringing phone echoing through the halls. She turns around to see the stranger reflected behind her in the mirror. She screams and screams, however, it is just a dream. Doctors run in to assist her as she cries "He's in the house! He's in the house!!" As the camera pans out, more people rush in the room to help her, showing that she was psychologically terrorized from the whole experience.

[edit] Advertisement

For the release of the film, AOL Instant Messenger ran ads beckoning users to IM Jill020306. When messaged, "Jill" (a Colloquis-style program) made small talk before panicking, as she received calls from a stranger asking her to check the children. She then gives the user her phone number (a toll-free 877 number) and asks them to call her. When users call, they hear an ad for the movie. Like many automated messaging agents, "Jill" is easily confused, which resulted in some unintentionally hilarious moments —

Jill: I think I am going crazy. Look, all my friends are at a party - you need to call me and listen in on this call.
User: How are you doing?
Jill: I'm doing great. You?

Sometimes other glitches occur, such as Jill asking what she should do before telling the user that a stranger is calling her.

Also, around the time of the DVD release, a new screen name appeared, Jill051606, to tie in with the DVD release date, May 16, 2006. It does not involve calling her, but instead she directs you to a video security system on the official DVD site where the shadow of the stranger passes by frequently.

MySpace.com also ran an advertisement: the profile for Jill051606, in which users can add the profile as a friend, leave comments, read the blog and IM.

[edit] Credited cast

[edit] Response

Critical consensus was negative, with the average grade on Yahoo! Movies being a "D", despite the film's 21.6 million dollar opening setting the record for a movie opening on Super Bowl XL weekend.[1] On the review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes, 10% of critics gave the film positive reviews, based on 84 reviews, with the consensus that the film is "a poorly acted, fright-free remake".[2] The biggest criticism of the remake was that it gave away the moment of suspense from the original by revealing the source of the calls in the previews, and also the fact that the film just wasn't scary. The problem arguably results from the fact that the remake amputated about half the original plot. Reviews of the 1979 movie continually praise the fact that Curt Duncan isn't just a faceless superpowered psychopath - which is exactly what the villain in the 2006 remake is.

As of January 10, 2008, the film grossed a total of 47.9 million dollars in the domestic box office, and 66.9 million dollars worldwide.[3]

The movie was released on May 16, 2006 for PSP and DVD. Special features include two commentaries (one with Camilla Belle and Simon West; the other with Jake Wade Wall), deleted scenes, a 20-minute making-of featurette, and trailers.

[edit] Sequel

The sequel is planned to be released in May 09. It will be direct to DVD and star Heroes star Hayden Panettiere it will co-star Aaron Ashmore, Melinda Clarke and Tessa Thompson.


[edit] Worldwide

The film grossed a total of 66.9 million dollars worldwide. In its first week, it grossed 24.8 million dollars.[4]

Alternate titles worldwide:

  • Mexico/Venezuela/Ecuador: Cuando Un Extraño Llama
  • Spain: Cuando Llama Un Extraño
  • France: Terreur Sur La Ligne
  • Germany: Unbekannter Anrufer
  • Italy: Chiamata Da Uno Sconosciuto
  • Portugal: Chamada De Um Estranho
  • Brazil: Quando Um Estranho Chama
  • Serbia: Kad stranac pozove
  • Poland: Kiedy dzwoni nieznajomy
  • Vietnam: Khi người lạ gọi điện

[edit] References

  1. ^ Movie & TV News @ IMDb.com - Studio Briefing - 6 February 2006
  2. ^ ROTTEN TOMATOES: Movies – Top Movies, Trailers, Tickets & Showtimes
  3. ^ When a Stranger Calls (2006)
  4. ^ When a Stranger Calls - Box Office Data, Movie News, Cast Information - The Numbers

[edit] External links


Preceded by
Big Momma's House 2		 Box office number-one films of 2006 (USA)
February 5, 2006		 Succeeded by
The Pink Panther