| horcrux2007 |
07-01-2015 05:59 PM |
When A Stranger Calls (1979)
I finally decided to sit down and watch this "classic", and I have to say that I was half-terrified, half-disappointed. It's a movie where I loved only certain scenes, while other scenes were a labor to sit through. When A Stranger Calls is a 1979 thriller is about a babysitter who gets creepy phone calls during the night, and when the calls are traced by the police, it starts a deadly chain of events that haunt her for years. This film is infamous for the first 20 minutes, and that alone makes this movie watchable. The opening scene of When A Stranger Calls is agonizingly terrifying, especially watching it alone in the dark. It's without a doubt one of the best openings to a horror film I've ever seen. Up there with The Ring and Suspiria. However, after the first 20 minutes, the film takes a huge nose dive. I don't want to get into too much detail so that I can avoid spoilers, but I'll just say that it goes from a terrifying suspense film to an unfocused, dull cop revenge thriller. The sudden tonal shift is rather jarring, but I could have forgiven that had the film been much more tight and controlled. It seemed like an hour of filler. Fortunately, the last act of the movie returns to the suspense nature of the first act, and it becomes almost as thrilling as the start of the film. When A Stranger Calls is bookended by some of the scariest scenes in cinema, and that makes this film worth a watch. It's worth laboring through the middle 45 minutes.
5/10
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