Search - When A Killer Calls on DVD

1.5 STARS: "When a Lame and Pointless Ripoff Occurs"

HorrorMan | The Marsten House | 08/24/2009

(1 out of 5 stars)

"What happens when you have a ripoff of an all-time classic horror movie named "When A Stranger Calls" (closer to the inferior remake than original classic though), really bad almost laughable acting, rigid action, rather amateurish graphic violence, and really cheap production values? Well, the answer of course would be "When A Killer Calls".

"When A Killer Calls" does not even attempt to differentiate itself from "When A Stranger Calls". Although as I said, the feel of this movie is closer to the remake of "When A Stranger Calls" (which was not good in and of itself) as opposed to the classic. The creators of "When A Killer Calls" very obviously felt that what was missing from "When A Stranger Calls" was the lack of on-screen violence and violence towards children. To each his own, but I beg to differ with them on that issue. One of the darkly magical qualities about the original "When A Stranger Calls" was the movie's ability to be so incredibly suspenseful and scary with almost zero on-screen violence. When will they all learn? A great scary movie is all about a good story, establishing mood and atmosphere, suspense, style mixed with substance, creativity, setting and good characters. If you take out the babysitting urban legend (which is a good story), basically, "When A Killer Calls" has nothing to offer...certainly none of the qualities that are essential to a good horror movie that I just mentioned above.

So, to categorically compare "When A Killer Calls" to the original "When A Stranger Calls" is not even constructive because there is no comparison. The original "When A Stranger Calls" is scary whereas this generic regurgitated rubbish is not. As I eluded to, "When A Killer Calls" contains very little suspense, no twists (of any significance) and nothing to call its own unless you like to see violence towards children; and to hear a very fake knife sound ripping into flesh; and finally to have your oh-so common lame sex scene between two time-killing pointless body bag stuffers. Well, if that's worth your money, then knock yourself out, but that's about all there is to "When A Killer Calls". Basically, this movie just succeeded in taking the scary out of this very effective urban legend and replacing it with some rather lame attempts to shock and disturb. 1.5 STARS for this particular lame and bland version of an effective urban legend (hard to screw this up but they did) made famous by "When A Stranger Calls", and zero to the movie itself. A better name to call this movie would be "When a Lame and Pointless Ripoff Occurs".

"