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When a Stranger Calls Back, 1993
Julia (Jill Schoelen) is a high school girl babysitting two children when a mysterious man appears at the door asking her to call him a tow truck. The only problem? The phone is mysteriously dead and Julia starts to wonder if the man is really just there because of car troubles. After a grueling, disturbing ordeal, Julia barely escapes alive. Years later, Julia is a college student who realizes that someone is coming into her apartment. Mocked by the police, Julia finds unexpected allies in Jill (Carol Kane), a college mental health counselor, and John (Charles Durning), a police detective who once helped Jill with a very similar problem.
Genuinely frightening from beginning to end, this sequel builds wonderfully on the story from the original film.
If ever there was an unlikely candidate for a great horror film, it’s a made-for-TV 1990s sequel to a film from the 1970s. And yet here we are with a movie that is solid and spooky.
There are a lot of really great decisions made in this film, and one of the best has to be letting the initial sequence with Julia and the mysterious man play out for a loooooooong time. It’s like its own horror movie, that beginning sequence, lasting over 20 minutes of gradually increasing terror. Not wanting to admit that the phone is dead, Julia pretends to call the tow service, digging herself in deeper and deeper with the man as he comes back to the door for updates. Aside from checking on the windows and doors sooner, I’m not sure what else I’d have done differently in Julia’s position, and that alone is very scary. She’s a teenager in a house with two sleeping children and no phone. The man informs her that none of the neighbors are home. So just what is she meant to do?
It’s once we get past that opening sequence---one that is pure horror and suspense---that we get into more of a psychological horror. Julia is convinced that someone is coming into her apartment, but the mystery intruder is just making small changes. He moves a book. He changes the time on her alarm clock. Talking to Julia, Jill immediately gets it: “He makes small changes. But the scary thing is that he knows that you’ll notice.” Having experienced and survived the trauma of that night, Julia will forever wonder about the man and where he is and what he’s doing.
I’m not usually into movies where the killer is something of a blank, but here it really works because we are so locked into Julia’s point of view. Why should we know who this man is? (Or if it is a man, or two people?). All through the film we grapple with Julia’s uncertainty, not knowing when she should be afraid. Actually, we do know: she must always be afraid. And there’s something really refreshing about the way that the film puts the emphasis on Julia and the way that Jill and John work to support her. Obviously the stalker’s sadism is a huge part of the film, but the real focus is on Julia and Jill and how they work together to survive the threat. John’s character is also a great portrayal of an ally. When Julia’s statements about the night she was menaced don’t quite add up, John doesn’t merely assume that she’s lying or hysterical. He takes a step back to consider how what she experienced might make sense. His character is also a welcome addition because it keeps the film from merely being about men (the stalker, the police) making life miserable for women, and instead makes it a film about someone who knows just the line to walk to keep his victim helpless.
While the commentary on trauma and fear is effective, the movie is also just straight-up scary. The scene in the beginning sets the bar, and the rest of the film mostly lives up to it. In one scene that had me on the edge of my seat, Julia wakes up in the middle of the night not totally knowing why. She immediately calls Jill, who has Julia check the whole apartment while they are on the phone. Finally, she has Julia turn out all the lights to look out the windows. And what’s that, just there, in the corner of the window? As the camera pans slowly back and forth across Julia’s apartment, your eyes can’t help but grab every errant silhouette. This is how Julia feels all the time, and it’s horrifying just as a spectator.
The finale definitely goes some places. In lesser hands, some of the elements of the last act would come across as laughable or absurd. But through a combination of the performances and some absolutely bone-chilling visuals, I was in no laughing mood.
I also have to hand it to the film for some visceral elements that keep the movie grounded. After a character is attacked, two other characters arrive to the location and find IV bags and a bloody cloth---the remnants of the EMTs attempts to save the person. When a character fires a gun, the victim is thrown backwards. In one icky, uncomfortable scene, a character approaches someone in a hospital bed. Poking them tentatively at first, those pokes soon escalate to fists. What happens next in the hospital room is awful and yet also distressingly mundane. The movie creates an aura of real life, so that when things get a bit outlandish, it somehow still feels grounded.
And the performances are all really wonderful. Schoelen fully embodies Julia’s fatalistic outlook as a woman who is realizing she will never really be free. Kane is warm, but also teeters on the edge as Julia’s ordeal forces her to relive elements of her own traumatic past. And Burning is authoritative and yet with a hint of middle-aged fallibility that makes you nervous about him going up against a killer.
Seriously, no notes. This is a spooky, affecting horror movie.
When a Stranger Calls Back, 1993
Julia (Jill Schoelen) is a high school girl babysitting two children when a mysterious man appears at the door asking her to call him a tow truck. The only problem? The phone is mysteriously dead and Julia starts to wonder if the man is really just there because of car troubles. After a grueling, disturbing ordeal, Julia barely escapes alive. Years later, Julia is a college student who realizes that someone is coming into her apartment. Mocked by the police, Julia finds unexpected allies in Jill (Carol Kane), a college mental health counselor, and John (Charles Durning), a police detective who once helped Jill with a very similar problem.
Genuinely frightening from beginning to end, this sequel builds wonderfully on the story from the original film.
If ever there was an unlikely candidate for a great horror film, it’s a made-for-TV 1990s sequel to a film from the 1970s. And yet here we are with a movie that is solid and spooky.
There are a lot of really great decisions made in this film, and one of the best has to be letting the initial sequence with Julia and the mysterious man play out for a loooooooong time. It’s like its own horror movie, that beginning sequence, lasting over 20 minutes of gradually increasing terror. Not wanting to admit that the phone is dead, Julia pretends to call the tow service, digging herself in deeper and deeper with the man as he comes back to the door for updates. Aside from checking on the windows and doors sooner, I’m not sure what else I’d have done differently in Julia’s position, and that alone is very scary. She’s a teenager in a house with two sleeping children and no phone. The man informs her that none of the neighbors are home. So just what is she meant to do?
It’s once we get past that opening sequence---one that is pure horror and suspense---that we get into more of a psychological horror. Julia is convinced that someone is coming into her apartment, but the mystery intruder is just making small changes. He moves a book. He changes the time on her alarm clock. Talking to Julia, Jill immediately gets it: “He makes small changes. But the scary thing is that he knows that you’ll notice.” Having experienced and survived the trauma of that night, Julia will forever wonder about the man and where he is and what he’s doing.
I’m not usually into movies where the killer is something of a blank, but here it really works because we are so locked into Julia’s point of view. Why should we know who this man is? (Or if it is a man, or two people?). All through the film we grapple with Julia’s uncertainty, not knowing when she should be afraid. Actually, we do know: she must always be afraid. And there’s something really refreshing about the way that the film puts the emphasis on Julia and the way that Jill and John work to support her. Obviously the stalker’s sadism is a huge part of the film, but the real focus is on Julia and Jill and how they work together to survive the threat. John’s character is also a great portrayal of an ally. When Julia’s statements about the night she was menaced don’t quite add up, John doesn’t merely assume that she’s lying or hysterical. He takes a step back to consider how what she experienced might make sense. His character is also a welcome addition because it keeps the film from merely being about men (the stalker, the police) making life miserable for women, and instead makes it a film about someone who knows just the line to walk to keep his victim helpless.
While the commentary on trauma and fear is effective, the movie is also just straight-up scary. The scene in the beginning sets the bar, and the rest of the film mostly lives up to it. In one scene that had me on the edge of my seat, Julia wakes up in the middle of the night not totally knowing why. She immediately calls Jill, who has Julia check the whole apartment while they are on the phone. Finally, she has Julia turn out all the lights to look out the windows. And what’s that, just there, in the corner of the window? As the camera pans slowly back and forth across Julia’s apartment, your eyes can’t help but grab every errant silhouette. This is how Julia feels all the time, and it’s horrifying just as a spectator.
The finale definitely goes some places. In lesser hands, some of the elements of the last act would come across as laughable or absurd. But through a combination of the performances and some absolutely bone-chilling visuals, I was in no laughing mood.
I also have to hand it to the film for some visceral elements that keep the movie grounded. After a character is attacked, two other characters arrive to the location and find IV bags and a bloody cloth---the remnants of the EMTs attempts to save the person. When a character fires a gun, the victim is thrown backwards. In one icky, uncomfortable scene, a character approaches someone in a hospital bed. Poking them tentatively at first, those pokes soon escalate to fists. What happens next in the hospital room is awful and yet also distressingly mundane. The movie creates an aura of real life, so that when things get a bit outlandish, it somehow still feels grounded.
And the performances are all really wonderful. Schoelen fully embodies Julia’s fatalistic outlook as a woman who is realizing she will never really be free. Kane is warm, but also teeters on the edge as Julia’s ordeal forces her to relive elements of her own traumatic past. And Burning is authoritative and yet with a hint of middle-aged fallibility that makes you nervous about him going up against a killer.
Seriously, no notes. This is a spooky, affecting horror movie.