When a Stranger Calls

Jill Johnson, a high school student, takes a babysitting job at an isolated luxury house whose owners are out for the evening. Once the children are asleep, she settles in for a quiet night, only for a series of phone calls from an unknown man to break the routine. The caller keeps asking whether she has checked on the children, and the harassment escalates into a contest of nerves. When the police trace the calls, they tell her the source is inside the house, turning her uneventful evening into a struggle to get out alive.

Simon West directed this 2006 American horror and mystery film, the fourth of fourteen features in his directing career, following Lara Croft: Tomb Raider and preceding The Mechanic. Camilla Belle plays Jill, with Tommy Flanagan as the stranger, and Katie Cassidy, Tessa Thompson, Brian Geraghty and Clark Gregg among the supporting cast. The film was produced by John Davis, Wyck Godfrey and Ken Lemberger and runs 87 minutes.

Made for a budget of about 15 million dollars, it took roughly 67 million dollars worldwide, a return that far outweighed its cost. Audience scores sit below the midpoint, at 5.1 out of 10 on IMDb from around 52,000 votes and 5.7 out of 10 on TMDB from about 1,200 votes. A critics' rating of 3.7 out of 10 from 91 reviews places professional notice below even the mixed audience response.