Contentar Best movie of this year hands down!

ChanFamous I wanted to like it more than I actually did... But much of the humor totally escaped me and I walked out only mildly impressed.

Blake Rivera If you like to be scared, if you like to laugh, and if you like to learn a thing or two at the movies, this absolutely cannot be missed.

Jemima It's a movie as timely as it is provocative and amazingly, for much of its running time, it is weirdly funny.

Toronto85 'When a Stranger calls Back' takes us down the same path the original did with the psychopath harassing the babysitter initially, but takes a turn and makes this almost more chilling than the 1977 film. We meet Julia, a teenage girl who is babysitting two young kids. A man keeps knocking on the front door asking to use her phone because his car broke down. She writes his vehicle information down on a pad of paper, and puts it down and leaves the room. She is unable to call a towing company because the phones are dead! When she gets back to the pad of paper, everything she wrote down has been erased. The man outside claims to have seen someone walking around inside of the house, she looks into the living room.. someone dressed in black is headed straight for her! Sound familiar? It's a bit like the original, just without the phone calls or the man being upstairs. Julia survives and we flash forward five years. The children that night went missing and were never found, same goes for the man who was inside of the house. Julia is now living on her own near a college campus, still suffering from the effects of what happened that night. She looks in her closet and see's the shirt of the little boy (who she was babysitting) hanging up, and that's when she realizes that the psychopath is after her again. She gets in touch with Jill (Carol Kane), our heroine from the original film to help her through this. Jill gets John Clifford (the police officer from the first movie) to help her find the man as well, leading to an interesting story and a creepy ending.The psychopath in this sequel is nothing like Curt Duncan in the original. Duncan was simply deranged, this man is a master of illusion. He has the ability to be standing right next to you, but project his voice to make you believe he is outside your front door. He paints himself identical to an area of your apartment, so that you could walk right by him and not even realize he's there. That element makes 'When a Stranger Calls Back' an eerie and EXCELLENT film. It matches up well to the first one. Acting is great with Charles Dunning, Carol Kane and Jill Schoelen. I liked 'When a Stranger Calls' slightly more than this one for it's intensity, but this was really well done. Deserves a proper DVD release! 8/10

DVDZombie This is a genuinely decent thriller. It manages to capture much of the suspense and terror of When A Stranger Calls (1979) while bringing back Carol Kane and Charles Durning to reprise their original roles. Overall the plot, acting, direction, script work, story and camera work are all very well done. Why then do I say it's hard to watch? The movie falls down in two ways, the first is the terribly dated nineties fashions and hair styles. Most of it would be forgivable if the main characters clothing and hairstyle weren't so bad. This may seem like a trivial complaint but in all seriousness, it makes the movie hard to watch. A woman with a mullet, the vests, the high wasted stone washed (or is it acid washed?) jeans, the white running shoes, I mean it just looks so bad that it actually distracts you from the movie. Most film makers are careful to avoid dating their movies in this way. Generally they try to have actors and actresses look good while still keeping enough distance from popular fashion that the movie still looks good twenty years down the road. In the case of this movie though, caution was apparently thrown to the wind.The second downfall of this movie is the ending, which I won't give away but I'll elaborate a little on why it hurts the movie. The original ended in a fantastically sinister way. Having watched it recently, the ending of When A Stranger Calls actually sent a chill up my spine. This film however fails to achieve that and instead offers up a sort of ho hum ending that's quite forgettable.There is also a strange scene in a strip club that must of been born out of the California hard body craze. Rather then spoil the joyous fun by describing it, I'll leave it up to those of you who are adventurous enough to watch this movie and find out what I mean.All of that said, Charles Durning is fantastic in this as he has been in most things I've seen him in. He plays the role of the worn out detective very well. Carol Kane is believable as the somewhat strung out victim of a psychopath trying to move on with her life and achieve something meaningful. Jill Schoelen provides a good performance and the rest of the cast, with a couple of exceptions, all do a good job. The movie really is worth watching if you can tolerate the fashion disasters of it's era...actually disasters may be to a light a word, horrors maybe?

disdressed12 in my mind,this sequel to the original "When a Stranger Calls"(1979)is actually a better movie.i thought the story was better,with a better, much creepier and more intelligent villain.Carol Kane reprises her role from the original,and i actually thought she did a convincing job in this 1.i think that's because she plays an adult,and not a teenager.there are some interesting twists and the villain has more dimension.the overall look and feel of the film is much eerier than the original.to me,there is more of a sense of danger and distress.i have to admit the hairs on my neck stood up more than a few times.there is 1 real nail biting scene which kept me on the edge of my seat.for other recommendations,check out the review i did on the original.as for "When a Stranger Calls Back",i give it 7/10

tex-42 When a Stranger Calls Back is a sequel to the 1979 film starring Carol Kane.In this go around, Julia is a teenager babysitting for two children. During the night a man starts knocking at the door, trying to get her to let him in under the guise that his car has broken down. Julia refuses, but the tension keeps building as the voice tells her he has seen someone moving around upstairs, and that she should check on the children. She naturally runs to check on the children, only to find them gone. She then runs downstairs, and outside to find no one there, but the voice calls out to her again and she runs inside to find the shape of a man with his arms outstreched to get her. Julia then runs outside again into the arms of the parents who she was babysitting for, as her tormentor vanishes with the children.The movie then flashes forward five years where Julia is in college, and being stalked again. She seeks out the help of Jill (Kane), the survivor of the first film, who is now a counselor at Julia's college. Jill enlists the help of her policeman friend from the first film to find the stalker before he can get Julia. However, Jill herself soon becomes his prey.The movie drags heavily in the second act. The stalker's motives are never explained, nor does there seem to be any connection to Julia's first stalking. We never learn what has become of the children, and the ending comes up to fast, without letting things settle down first. This is definitely good for a TV movie, the opening alone is as good as or better than most typical horror films, but so much is left unexplained as to seriously frustrate the viewer.