Everybody knows the story. The young babysitter, all alone in the house with the kids in bed, and the telephone rings. There’s a creepy guy’s voice on the other end of the line asking “Have you checked the children?” She hangs up but the guy keeps calling back. Finally the babysitter calls the police who tells her… the call is coming from inside the house! While the “get out of the house, now!” twist had been used in
Black Christmas, When A Stranger Calls taps into a different fear.
As director and co-writer Fred Walton tells us, it’s not just the idea that this could happen. People believed it already had.