When a Stranger Calls
Horror movies have so many useful life lessons to share. Having sex at summer camp will get you killed (''Friday the 13th"). Dozing off in class or at home will get you killed (''A Nightmare on Elm Street"). Going anywhere near Neve Campbell will get you killed (''Scream," ''Scream 2," ''Scream 3"). In ''When a Stranger Calls," not having the right calling plan could get you killed. Even by the lowest standards, this is a frightless, cynically made movie. But its heroine's circumstances would make for a nifty ad for any cellular telephone company.
Jill Johnson (Camilla Belle) listened to her boyfriend prattle on about how he didn't mean to kiss one of Jill's best friends. He's really sorry -- like 800-minutes-over-the-monthly-limit sorry. But it's Jill who's grounded and must repay her folks for the cellphone bill. So she takes a baby-sitting gig at an outrageously over-architected house on a lake. While the kids sleep, someone keeps ringing the phone and hanging up. Sometimes the caller will ask Jill, ''Have you checked the children?" She calls the police, but she's on her own to creep very slowly down long corridors and around every corner, until she's backed into an anticlimactic cardio-based showdown.
''When a Stranger Calls," which was not screened for critics, is allegedly a remake of the 1979 chiller of the same name. Really, it's an extended-play remix of the older movie's first 20 minutes in which a prank caller made a young Carole Kane crawl out of her skin. That movie had a classic, elegant composition. For the most part, the camera remained still. The editing was crisp and deliberate, insinuating terror in a way that occasionally tingled the spine. It wasn't great, but it worked. This update, directed by Simon West (''Tomb Raider") and written by first-timer Jake Wade Wall, is radically revised hackwork. There's enough dead space to give an audience plenty of time to revolt.
It's also impossible to sit through knowing the opening scene of ''Scream" already tweaked the original ''Stranger" so brilliantly. This new version lops off the remaining 70 minutes of the '79 film, in which Charles Durning and the steely Colleen Dewhurst confront the film's escaped nutjob. West and Wall don't bother with any surprises. Instead, they cough up a garden-variety boogeyman, then put Belle on a chase-movie treadmill while she protects her two blathering charges. The whole thing ends with a whimper (not to mention the absurd promise of a sequel). Audiences are bound to exit ''Stranger" booing, knowing full well the movie belongs on their do-not-call list.
Wesley Morris can be reached at wmorris@globe.com.
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