When a Killer Calls

A female alone in a house at night, targeted by a madman

On a stormy night, a babysitter (Rebekah Kochan) starts her gig with a new family in SoCal, but finds herself harassed by phone calls from an unidentified man, whom she suspects is her boyfriend (Robert Buckley). When the latter & friends stop by (Sarah Hall), she knows the caller is someone else. Havoc ensues.

"When a Killer Calls" (2006) is a traditional slasher in the mold of 70’s movies “Home for the Holidays,” “Black Christmas,” “Savage Weekend,” “Halloween” and, of course, “When a Stranger Calls.” Practically every one of these involve a young female or three stuck in a house during a storm, staving off a psycho killer.

Armchair critics naturally have a low opinion of it because it was produced by The Asylum as a knockoff of the 2006 remake of “When a Stranger Calls” (they have the same plot), which turned out to be a hit at the box office. The theatrical film is more artistic and unsurprisingly so since it cost $15 million, while this one cost a fraction of that and yet delivers the goods for the genre and is quite brutal.

You have to remember that all of those 70’s slashers were low-budget affairs. “When a Stranger Calls” had a larger budget, $1.5 million, while “Halloween” only cost $325,000 and “Savage Weekend” a mere $58,000. Meanwhile “Home for the Holidays” had a TV budget. I point this out because competent filmmakers can make a quality slasher without a huge budget. Mockbuster or not, “When a Killer Calls” does this. True, the story is unoriginal, but so is the story in the remake of “When a Stranger Calls.”

Speaking of which, the idea of a babysitter being harassed by a psycho man is an urban legend, yet it’s based on real-life accounts, such as the 1950 case of Janett Christman from Columbia, Missouri, and the 1953 case of Evelyn Hartley in La Crosse County, Wisconsin. The first girl was found raped & murdered while the body of the second was never found. Both crimes remain unsolved.

The movie runs 1 hour, 31 minutes, and was shot at Lake Arrowhead, San Bernardino National Forest, California.

GRADE: B-/C+