Movies: When a Stranger Calls

I don't like remakes, as you should all know by now.
When someone remakes a good film I generally fall to my knees and howl to the deaf heavens "WHY, GOD? WHY!"

But a remake of a bad film is even more inexplicable. The original was a pedestrian affair who's single good moment was stolen from a campfire story- "he's in the house!" (which you saw in the preview, so why bother?)

I can't imagine the remake elevates the material any, and "he's in the house!" is once again the capper for the trailer (probably because there's nothing else to use).
Morbid curiosity drove me to rotten tomatoes to check out the critical reaction to this hound, and I thought I'd share some of the amusing pull quotes here:

"If you answer, you may be bored to death."
-- John Wirt, ADVOCATE (BATON ROUGE, LA)

"some of the cast is so bad it made me wonder if they won some sort of internet contest, or were the fifth caller on a radio station to get their roles"
-- Willie Waffle, WAFFLEMOVIES.COM

"A minimum effort horror movie. It does just enough to scare easily unnerved thirteen-year-old girls, and not much else."
-- Joshua Tyler, CINEMABLEND.COM

"Then I'm like 'what's the movie called?' And he's like 'When a Stranger Calls.' And I'm like 'Is it about telemarketing?'"
-- Mark Ramsey, MOVIEJUICE!

"Features an ending guaranteed to confuse and confound morons."
-- Jon Popick, PLANET SICK-BOY

"This week's installment in the 'this film is so bad we're not screening it for critics' series."
-- Frank Scheck, HOLLYWOOD REPORTER

"The scare-free When a Stranger Calls is the worst of the seminal horror movies from the late '70s and early '80s that have been getting the remake treatment lately."
-- Lou Lumenick, NEW YORK POST


That last quote you need to take with a grain of salt...calling the original "seminal" and lumping it in with the likes of Dawn of the Dead and Texas Chainsaw Massacre is like including Billy Joel's Uptown Girl on a concert program with Mozart's Requiem and Beethoven's 9th.