When a Killer Calls (2006)

When I first started watching this movie, I had to double-check IMDB to make sure it wasn't from the 80s.  The video quality is so shitty that I thought it couldn't possibly be from this decade.  After checking that, I had to make sure that this wasn't made by my little cousin and his FlipCam.  Another negative, so although you wouldn't have guessed it, this movie is made by actual filmmakers, less than 5 years ago.  Moving on.

We open on a brutal scene of bondage and stabbing, including doing so with kids.   He captures it all on his cellphone, presumably to post to Facebook and tag friends.  Or Twitter?  I don't know how this dude rolls.  After a pretty cool knife death, we switch up the setting.

Trisha is a babysitter.  An extremely irresponsible one.  Basically, the parents lay down some pretty basic rules for her: no visitors, no ice cream for the kid, and bed at 9pm.  She breaks all of them in record time, making me wonder why anyone entrusts their kids with this stupid chick.  She spends the majority of the babysitting time on the phone with her boyfriend.  Soon enough, she starts receiving creepy calls on her phone from a "restricted" number.  In the vein of the many babysitter movies that came before it, the mystery man calls repeatedly, alternately wanting to chat and reminding Trisha to check on her babysitting charge.

Predictably, she finally gives in and calls the police, where they direct her on how to trace the call.  Their directions actually seem to make zero sense whatsoever, but I'm too concerned with waiting for the moment that they tell her the calls are coming from inside the house.  Guess I'm a traditionalist.

However, the calls decline and the douche factor rises and we get stuck in sort of a non-scary holding pattern for a bit.  But then my patience pays off as we're treated to an ultra creepy killer and some pretty solid death scenes.  This movie was actually not so bad overall.  It certainly wasn't in the realm of When a Stranger Calls or even Babysitter Wanted, but it wasn't completely horrendous either.  The picture and sound quality was pretty bad, and the acting is about what you'd expect.  The killer's motivation was actually pretty original and although the ending was "meh," at least they didn't drag this shit out and leave it open for "When a Killer Gets a New Cell Phone" or some crap.

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Random: 30 Day Horror Challenge Day 1

I'm one day behind on this 30-Day Horror Challenge, but I'm going to catch up today.  These 30 Day things seem really big on Facebook, where all my teenage cousins seem to be doing them.  Yay, finally one for grown-ups.

Today's topic? A horror film that no one would expect you to love, but you do.

I was literally the only person that voted for When a Stranger Calls for Final Girl's Shocktober last year.  I did a lot of babysitting as a teenager, and babysitter movies always freaked me out to the core.  One of the creepiest parts about babysitting was going to check on the kids periodically, and I always had the sinking feeling I'd look in on them one night to find them gone.  Couple that with the fact that I am terrified of children from horror movies (I used to babysit a kid that was creepily similar to Gage from Pet Semetary) and you've got someone who would be afraid of a movie that involves Carol Kane.

Obviously the first 30 minutes of When a Stranger Calls is far superior to the rest of the movie, but I still think that scene in the restaurant at the end is bananas.  Also an awesome movie is the little-known When a Stranger Calls Back, a made-for-TV movies from the 90s that seriously gives me the willies.  I haven't seen it in years (after I lost the VHS that my sister and I taped off of television) so if someone can hook a sister up, let me know.

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