WHEN A KILLER CALLS is far superior to its big budget counterpart, 2006′s tepid remake of “When a Stranger Calls.” The latter is more a suspenser than an out-and-out horror film but its suspense, while not lacking, is not particularly strong, either. WHEN A KILLER CALLS is tense, scary and brutal. It’s got heavy slasher violence – this is a flick that reminds us brutality can be as simple as a knife – as well as a psychological sucker punch that is sometimes tied into the physical mayhem. The film is lean and stylish, with nice nuances and flourishes to add texture. It takes a spartan concept and stretches it out much better than either 2006′s “… Stranger …” or the 1979 original – which was a short film padded out to feature length. Let’s just say this is the first time a variation on this tale has been done effectively. The latter-day “… Stranger …” is edgeless and lacks fear. The original has moments of intensity (as memory serves) but the pacing suffers from the padding, which also gives the movie an identity crisis – it can’t decide if it wants to be police procedural or a “Halloween” type kill-the-babysitter movie with a tweak. WHEN A KILLER CALLS turns up the suspense gradually until the tension and viciousness converge in a lingering, torturous sequence in which the central character, the unfortunate babysitter, must contemplate her situation and the wholesale massacring of people she knows. Here and onward, WHEN A KILLER CALLS takes on a surprisingly grindhouse tone that is segued right in without a hitch. This scene is a quiet in the storm but it is possibly, excepting the climax, the most gut-wrenching and fearful portion of the film. WHEN A KILLER CALLS starts out light, with a teen scares kind of feel, but bit-by-bit pulls you into dark places filled with horror both physical and psychological. It’s a bleak yet not nihilistic psycho-killer movie that outdoes its core source material while also making slick use of nods to the original “Black Christmas,” as well as “Scream.” I should add, the whodonit element is deftly handled, and the prologue gets the film out of the gates like a Kentucky Derby winner.
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