Oof, where to begin with this one? I’ll start by saying that if you’re looking for something to effectively sum up noughties horror, pick When A Stranger Calls (2006). From the classically painful 2000s wardrobe choices, to the strange art-deco interior design, this film definitely sparks a note of nostalgia. But not the kind of nostalgia where you feel sentimental and joyous… No, this is more of the cringe-worthy, uncomfortable nostalgia, the kind where you appreciate the reminder but thank your lucky stars that we don’t live in that era anymore. Of course, the film itself cannot be faulted for being a hilarious zeitgeist, it is merely a product of its own unfortunate time. It can, however, be faulted for its content.

The plot of When A Stranger Calls naturally touches upon a situation that every young, naive babysitter imagined themselves in at one point or another. I did my fair share of babysitting for a range of families throughout Middle and High School and I can safely admit that a couple of the houses were a bit too spacious, a bit too secluded, a bit too dark for my liking. I definitely visualised myself in some horrific situation where some deranged killer would be standing by the living room window, waiting for their chance to smash the glass and slay me down. As a babysitter you are entrusted with a great deal of responsibility, especially considering most of them out there are between the ages of about 14 and 18. You’re left alone in an unfamiliar environment where you’re supposed to take care of one or more living souls above your own and it is almost always at night. So I approve of the plot devices selected for this film – I could relate to the young character, it was relatively believable and the concept itself is enough to give you goosebumps. But the execution let the idea down.

I found myself asking so many questions during this film. This psychotic babysitter serial-killer, is he part of a babysitting directory or Facebook group or something? Because how does he always just seem to know when parents decide to hire someone to care for their kids? And if he is part of some group like that, they seriously need to revamp their monitoring and background-check system because why are they letting some middle-aged man with a scarred-up face lurk in the shadows of the forum? Why did the mother never call Jill back when Jill clearly sounded flustered and afraid in her message? I know parents when they leave their children for an evening – they check their phones constantly, no matter how much fun the night ends up being. How damn long did the police take to get to the house once they were dispatched? I tried to clock it and I swear it took them way longer than the aforementioned 20 minutes. Probably most importantly, who the hell was this killer? I understand not wanting to weigh a horror down with too much context but let’s humanise the killer at least a touch, right? It’s as if they instead almost made him into this strange, unidentifiable quasi-supernatural entity with super-human speed, quietness of a cat and the talent of guessing different phone numbers really well. He just kind of showed up to kill and I wasn’t really here for that kind of reductivism – it’s just boring and predictable. And finally, why do these people have what is clearly meant to be an outdoor water feature inside their house? This question obviously isn’t as important to the essence of the film itself but it still bugged me. It’s like the only way they knew how to represent extreme affluence was by putting ‘exotic’ birds and fish inside the house (because every ruffian apparently has koi outside their houses…).

Replete with red herrings, I found myself bored waiting for something to actually happen throughout. One of my pet peeves in horror is when they throw extremely predictable, stereotypical horror tropes at you, and they definitely didn’t shy away in this one: the black cat, the secluded house by the lake, the empty running shower, mysterious lights turning on and off. There is a difference between building suspense and outright drawing out each scene so as to meet the minimum length for a feature film. I can only watch a girl pick up a phone, listen to a weird man’s heavy breathing and then freak out and cry a couple times before completely checking out and just wishing that she’d die already. So no surprises here, I would not recommend When A Stranger Calls. My only advice: if a stranger does end up calling, just hang up the way I very quickly hung up on this film.