Movie Review: When a Stranger Calls

When a Stranger Calls (2006)

Directed by Simon West 

Written by Jake Wade Wall

Starring Camilla Belle, Tommy Flanagan, Charles Durning, Rosine Hatem

Release Date February 3rd, 2006

Published February 3rd, 2006 

Director Simon West is best known for the bombastic action features Con Air and Lara Croft: Tomb Raider. The failure of that last film to break out into a bankable franchise, beyond the equally abysmal sequel, has lead West to fewer opportunties to direct big budget features. His latest effort is a much smaller and quieter, though no less insipid, little horror remake, When A Stranger Calls.

Newcomer Camilla Belle stars in When A Stranger Calls as Jill Johnson. At 15 years old she is in the prime of her babysitting career. While all of her friends are attending a school bonfire party, poor Jill is stuck babysitting for the Mandrakis family. Naturally the Mandrakis home is in the middle of nowhere, far from even a police patrol in case of a problem.

The house is pretty spectacular--remote everything, well stocked fridge and even an indoor aviary. There is also a housekeeper, Rosa (Rosine Hatem) -in place to "up" the body count- who curiously was not hired to watch the children.

The setup is simple-minded. A killer (Tommy Flanagan), established in a bloodless opening that we are told is brutal but, because of the film's PG-13 rating, we never see. The killer's M.O is killing babysitters and children. Asking why is for an entirely different and likely more interesting movie. Once Jill is in place in the perfectly remote, expansive and often dark house, the movie is essentially a high-stakes game of hide-and-seek that hits obligatory cliches before reaching its predictable finish.

This remake differs greatly from the original, which some consider a genre classic. The original film played out in three acts, with the babysitter, played by Carol Kane, fending off the killer in the first act. A cop played by Charles Durning tracks the killer in the second act. Finally, in the third act, a few years later, the killer tracks down the babysitter once again. The remake confines the action to what took place in the first act of the original film and attempts to tease that out into a full feature. This might explain why the plot and premise of the remake is so thin.

The 1979 When A Stranger Calls is oft forgotten, despite its iconic qualities. The film is lost to history for the most part, but the phrase "the call is coming from inside the house" is a horror movie legend. Of course that one phrase is not nearly enough reason to make the film a second time and Simon West's film spends ninety minutes demonstrating that.

In reviews of movies like Hostel, High Tension and Devil's Rejects I have lambasted horror filmmakers for going too far in their attempts to frighten and titilate. When A Stranger Calls demonstrates the delicate balance between too much and too little. The PG-13 flick has too little of what each of those other films I mentioned have too much of. When A Stranger Calls is bloodless, sexless and, most damning, frightless.

It's a difficult balancing act but, as demonstrated by great horror films like May or Freddy Vs Jason, when a filmmaker can balance the blood, guts and sex, a great movie can result.

Simon West has, since Con Air, been a Michael Bay wannabe. Consider that Con Air was a Jerry Bruckheimer film so ridiculous that Bay himself would not direct it. That career-shadowing of Bay continues in When A Stranger Calls. As Bay has taken the time to remake Texas Chainsaw Massacre and The Amityville Horror, West once again takes on a pale imitation of Bay by adapting a lesser film.

If a filmmaker's aspiration is limited to mimicking the career path of Michael Bay, maybe he should consider a different career altogether.

Movie Review Push

Push (2009) 

Directed by Paul McGuigan

Written by David Bourla 

Starring Chris Evans, Dakota Fanning, Camilla Belle, Ming Na, Cliff Curtis 

Release Date February 6th, 2009

Published February 5th, 2009 

Director Paul McGuigan directed the clever, funny, con-man comedy Lucky Number Slevin. It was his first feature and it should have portended great things for his career. Sadly for his Slevin follow up McGuigan chose Push, a terribly goofy comic book movie about psychic superheroes and a government conspiracy. Where Slevin was endlessly inventive, Push is predictable and sloppy.

What a shame.

Handsomely mild actor Chris Evans stars in Push as Nick a man on the run since his father was hunted down and murdered by a mysterious  government entity. Since then Nick has lived off the grid in Japan hoping to keep a low enough profile to be left alone. That all changes when Nick is discovered by a teenage psychic named Cassie (Dakota Fanning) who has had a vision about him and her and their deaths.

On the bright side, she's also had a vision about a young woman named Kira (Camilla Belle) who may be able to save them. Kira is the only person ever to escape from the shadowy government forces chasing Nick and Cassie and if they find her she could be the key to bringing the conspiracy down. Add in a helpful psychic con man (Cliff Curtis) and another more powerful psychic hiding out as a fake psychic (Ming Na) and you have a misfit team ready for battle.

The premise of Push plays not at all unlike the TV series Heroes. Both are about shady conspiracy, hunting down people with special abilities and wild special effects. Both are also wildly divergent in quality, Heroes can vary from week to week with good episodes and not so good ones. Push has one chance to work and fails.

I have been a little dismissive of the story potential of Push. There is certainly nothing wrong with a comic book style movie about superheroes. The key is making those heroes compelling and their journey interesting beyond their powers. Director McGuigan and screenwriter David Bourla fail this by vaguely defining the powers and muddying the government conspiracy premise.

Not that a cleaner narrative might have made much of a difference. The super powers on display, people pushing other people with their minds or controlling objects with their minds or seeing the future, simply are not all that interesting. The best superheroes have powers that comment on their personality. The abilities reflect the man (or less often the woman) and we learn something about them through their uniqueness.

No such comment or reflection emerges from Push. Instead we have a series of dull, uninspired effects scenes.

I expected much more from Director Paul McGuigan. Lucky Number Slevin was the kind of debut that promises so much more from a director's future. It was a far from perfect movie but a clever, funny, imaginative film. Push is nearly the complete opposite. Derivative and uninspired, Push is disappointing beyond Director Paul McGuigan. It's disappointing to have to have sat through such a lacking effort.

Movie Review 10,000 B.C

10,000 B.C 

Directed by Roland Emmerich 

Written by Roland Emmerich, Harald Kloser 

Starring Steven Strait, Camilla Belle, Cliff Curtis 

Release Date March 7th, 2008 

Published March 6th, 2008 

Director Roland Emmerich has a track record that only Uwe Boll might envy. Based on the success of his one, Will Smith aided, success, Independence Day, Emmerich has been handed massive budget followed by massive budget to make one awful movie after another. There was Mel Gibson's jingoistic yay America, faux history actioner, The Patriot. Then Emmerich assassinated the legendary cheeseball Japanese monster Godzilla. Then he made a joke of environmental science with the mind numbingly awful The Day After Tomorrow. Now Emmerich is denigrating the stone age with his Flintstones-esque 10,000 B.C. I take that back, The Flintstones has more historical integrity than anything with Roland Emmerich's name on it.

Steven Strait, the vacant eyed, model cheekboned star of The Covenant takes the lead role in 10,000 B.C as D'leh. After his father deserted the tribe to chase the hunt, D'Leh became an outcast. Raised by dad's best friend Tic'Tic (Cliff Curtis), D'Leh lived to live down his father's shame. Thus when given the chance to hunt the massive wooly mammoth he risks his life to be the one to take down the beast. Secondary to overcoming his shame is winning the hand of the fair, blue eyed, Evolet (Camilla Bell), a transplant from another tribe that was overrun by four legged demons.

Those 4 legged demons are actually another tribe; smarter and more vicious than our heroes. They have horses. This evil tribe overruns other tribes, takes the men hostage and uses them to build temples to their pagan gods. When the four legged demons come to D'Leh's camp they kill men, women and children and take as many hostages as possible. A rare few survive and escape including D'Leh and his mentor Tic'Tic. Now they must hunt the hunters and free their people so that D'Leh can reclaim his girl, she was taken hostage, and become the leader of his tribe.

That is the plot in a linear, logical sense, and it's not bad in description. Unfortunately, as executed by Roland Emmerich and his apparently amateur effects team, 10,000 B.C plays alternately like the worst of Mystery Science Theater schlock or a bad Saturday Night Live skit. A scene early in the film where D'Leh and company hunt wooly mammoths literally features scenes of actors obviously running in place in front of a green screen. Later, the masses of extras building temples for the bad guys comes off as stolen stock footage of Liz Taylor's Cleopatra.

Then there is our star Steven Strait. Anyone who saw his work in the indie music drama Undiscovered, the film best known for the acting debut of Ashlee Simpson, knows that vacant stare and empty good looks. This ex-model leads a cast of gap ad ready cavemen into battle against what can only be described as the cast of the Arabic Project Runway. The bad guys, aside from a couple of toughs who lead the human hunting party, are an effete, pageantry loving people who mince like Rip Taylor in the New York City St. Patrick's Day Parade. Why? Who knows why? But they do.

In a career of really bad movies, Roland Emmerich has finally hit his career low. If he can make a movie more ludicrous and amateurish, I hope we never see it. 10,000 B.C is a brutal, mind numbing, unintentionally humorous trip back in time.