Movie Title: When A Stranger Calls
Rating: 
(3/10)
Year: 2006
When A Stranger Calls official site: http://www.sonypictures.com/movies/whenastrangercalls/
When we were kids, our parents always warned us to not talk to strangers.
But I don’t think we ever listen to them. And this movie serves a great reminder to all of us to do so.
I personally with the advancement of social media, it is really hard to resist the temptation to talk to a stranger.
In fact, younger generations these days enjoy talking to strangers.
While this genre of movie may not be my favourite, it is something that I wouldn’t mind should someone is accompanying me to watch it.
The movie introduce us to a teenage young girl, Jill. She was grounded by her parents when they found out that she had over used her phone credit limits. Thus, they decided to make her babysit in order to earn some cash and learn to be more responsible. In case any curious soul wonder why she burst her phone credit limits, it was due to Jill having a fight with her boyfriend when she found out that him and her best friend kissed.
Like any setting of a thriller movie, the location where every crime happens are a secluded big house surrounded by forests and are situated out of nowhere. Jill arrived to the family house where she is supposed to babysit. The house owner briefly debrief Jill and left.
Everything seems fine, but the director manage to slip in some suspense, with the family’s maid walking around unintroduced to the basic trick of auto sensor lighting.
Suddenly, the phone starts to ring. A couple of strange calls starts to happen, with no one speaking on the other side.
And all Jill could hear was breathing sounds. The mysterious caller even led Jill to run around hunting for him like a cat and mouse game.
The chase was going on for quite a while, the ending of how he was caught was rather disappointing. After such a long hunt, the mysterious caller was caught in less than 10 minutes. And the same ending tactics which makes one wonder if there were other mastermind out there that manage to escape, which leads to a sequel.
While the opening scenes looks quite promising, it ultimately ends with disappointment. Worst was when there were quite many scenes which were less logical, for instance when a parent left their kids for the first time with a new babysitter at home, wouldn’t you want to check up on the kids? I am still shocked when they don’t just because they are worried the kids would be awaken by the babysitter when she opened the door.
And what more absurd was how the psycho killer knew how many people were at home, where the kids slept and even know they had a guest house opposite their main house. Talk about stalker mode ON.