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Overall Rating : 3.5/10
Directed By : Peter Mervis
Rebekah Kochan
Mark Irvingsen (Scarecrow Slayer)
Sarah Hall
Derek Osedach
Supplied By : The Asylum
Film Reviewed By : Rick L. Blalock
Date Reviewed : Feb. 27, 2006
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| PLOT This modern adaptation of the classic babysitter urban legend that inspired HALLOWEEN and WHEN A STRANGER CALLS, follows a young babysitter who receives a seemingly harmless phone call from an anonymous stranger. This annoyance turns to terror when she finally has the calls traced to inside the house. |
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| THE REVIEW This contains SPOILERS WHEN A KILLER CALLS follows the story of a young babysitter named Trisha. Trisha is babysitting for a new family, the Walkers who are on their way to a special dinner. On their commute there they are actually murdered, by apparently someone they know. Trisha seems to be enjoying herself, getting to know the young girl in which she is baby sitting, but once she puts the little girl to bed, Trisha begins receiving eerie phone calls to her cell phone as well as the home phone. The eerie phone calls, calls that at first were thought to be playful pranks committed by her boyfriend Matt prove to be far more serious, especially when she receives pictures of a former client in which she used to baby sit for and her 2 children dead in pools of their own blood. When Matt and a few friends show up, more suspicion rises as it is proven to be neither of the 3 making the calls, all of which would become clearer later. Later on into the night Trisha sees a newscast that states that the husband of the former female client had murdered his wife and kids, shortly there after the police have traced the calls from inside of the house, and they instruct her to retrieve young Molly and vacate the house. It happens to be too late as she discovers that the young girl has been slain by the killer inside the house, Trisha must now get out to save her own life. When I first heard the news of this film a few months back I was eagerly anticipating it, and even more so after seeing, possibly The Asylum's best effort to date. EXORCISM : THE POSSESSION OF GAIL BOWERS last month. The box reads that it is inspired by the urban legend that inspired such films as HALLOWEEN, BLACK CHRISTMAS and WHEN A STRANGER CALLS, but this is certainly not true at all, people. Instead of really being "inspired" by anything, all this film basically does is LIFT scenes directly from the mentioned movies, as if this film's name wasn't already too much. Now I am not opposed to watching any film that takes elements from other films, but in this case this is far too close, and feels like an after-school parody of the originals. The plot for WHEN A KILLER CALLS, is the exact same plotline fo the far to closely named WHEN A STRANGER CALLS that came out years before The Asylum was even a thought. This film takes the approach of the remake of WHEN A STRANGER CALLS that came out this year in which it takes a 5 or 10 minute sequence from the original film and stretches it into a full length feature and for both the remake and this film it has proven to be a failure. The dialogue in this film is very poorly written and feels like they were trying to take the dialogue style found within HALLOWEEN and "modernize" it, this too did not work. The killer in KILLER CALLS is far too unbelievable and un frightening that when seen there is literally nothing left to shock you, even when the filmmakers think they are shocking you, I think that this is due to the film revealing just who the killer is war too early in the film. For instance, about 5 minutes into the film it is revealed that the Walkers knew him, and instantly that makes you wonder if he is from the previous family the babysitter was involved in. In the beginning the Walkers said they were recommended Trisha from the previous family.... and when it was revealed that the Walkers knew who was killing them, well that was telling a bit too much a little too early. And then later as Trisha sees the guys face on the news, it gives us his face therefore making him less intimidating. Michael Myers has always been intimidating for one reason, and that being that his face is always covered, except for a brief moment when it is shown in HALLOWEEN when Mike was played by Tony Moran(who is a friend of mine) and in HALLOWEEN 5, when played by Don Shanks in which they show his eye and briefly the side of face. So when the filmmakers attempt a scare moment or twist here it is not so shocking anymore because Mark Irvingsen's character looks just like a normal guy at a Halloween party dressed as Michael Myers... minus a mask. Also I can't forget to mention while on the subject of comparisons, that our killer kills someone by suffocating them with a plastic bag, almost like in BLACK CHRISTMAS. This film takes itself seriously, but with so much unoriginality and terrible acting there's really not much of anything for any intelligent viewer to take serious for themselves.... and to top everything off the film uses cgi gunfire.... that's enough to end all seriousness right there....if you don't have the money for it then DON'T use it, after all HALLOWEEN didn't use gun closeups... |
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| GORE
METER 4.5/10 Not as much blood as one should get from a slasher film... |
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| MUSICAL
SCORE 4/10 The score of the film sounds a little too inspired, much like the film, really offers nothing much that grabs the nerves. |
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| OVERALL
IMPRESSION OF THE FILM I am very disappointed as I did expect a film that would homage the movies that are mentioned in it's synopsis. All of my hopes were send straight down the drain once I saw just how much un-originality was brought forth here. I'd be willing to bet that the few people that praise this film have seen none of these originals, ok besides HALLOWEEN because if you haven't seen that you are a moron. If they had they'd look at this film and giggle at all of the less than stellar re-enactments.....I say rent the original films and you'd be better off, trust me. |
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