This movie is quite good, it has several unique aspects and keeps you on your toes. I enjoyed it thoroughly and would recommend this movie to anyone who enjoys scary movies. Many plot twits, unpredictable, and the acting was good.Nothing over the top, realistic, and well made.7/10.

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?

Just like its modest predecessor it's a moodily atmospheric on-edge thriller that's just as good, if not better than its inspiration. Basically the same-setup and story structure (it's ringing off the hook), but writer / director Fred Walton (who directed and co-penned the original) competently pulls it off again. Lucky Walton illustrates another blindingly chilling and unbearably taut opening that drips with intensity and intrigue. Simple, but unquestionably effective. Something about the tone is creepier and dark, and it never lets the viewer get comfortable because it seems to stay there. Even then it really plays more like an open-wound, slow-burn mystery, but none of that lingering dread evaporates after the terrific opening. It's much more persistent, and the killer is kept in the shadows and emit's a disturbingly unnerving awe. He's a weirdo (a perfectly eerie Gene Lythgow), but there's no real reasoning for his obsessive tormenting of the traumatised girl (a beautifully sensitive performance by Jill Schoelen). This leaves some logic holes in the plot, but there's a little more novelty to it and it doesn't feel as loose. Coming back for seconds (returning from the original) are splendid turns by Carol Kane and Charles Dunning. Walton's exceptional direction is well drilled and it's passively shot with proficient positioning. The score stays strong, by inducing a spooky and suspenseful essence. This can be appreciated with its beautifully constructed nerve-wrecking conclusion.

If you were a fan of the first movie, "When A Stranger Calls", you definitely need to check this one out. If you were only a fan of the first 15 or so minutes from the first movie, you still need to check out the sequel."When a Stranger Calls" is primarily known for (abeit not widely known) its nail-biting, excruciatingly tense beginning. Then, however, the movie drifted off track. It tried to make us sympathize too closely with the killer. A little sympathy is good, but "When a Stranger Calls" went overboard and the overall film suffered for it, feeling unfocused and unpolished."When a Stranger Calls Back" fixes all that. First of all, and these are not spoilers to either movie, while in the first film the killer was once caught and escaped, in this one the killer had never been caught. No one knows who he is or even if there is more than one.More importantly, though, "When a Stranger Calls Back" gives the viewer just enough information to follow the story but not enough to explain every detail. This is a good thing, as it creates a greater sense of unease. For instance, did the children from the beginning die? No one knows, but they've been missing for five years.The scenes are picked deliberately and each one emits an eerie coating that makes the viewer feel uncomfortable for the entire movie (i.e. the house at the beginning and the hospital room at night). Music, thankfully, is not used to attempt to induce scares out of people. Rather, the scary scenes are deathly silent.While there are a couple jump shocks, this film relies primarily on atmosphere. This is where the first movie failed. We find out early on that the killer was caught and then escaped from a mental ward many years later. But we the viewers see the killer close up repeatedly in the tiresome second act as the guy does very non-scary and nonviolent things. Here, though, no one knows who the killer is. In fact, the only evidence that there even was one (besides the hysterical babysitter who could have been "seeing things") is that the children are missing.Much like "The Ring", this film works because it sets up a mystery from the first act, defining several clues, and challenges the viewer to figure out the solution. The first movie had no mystery after the first 15 minutes."When a Stranger Calls Back" doesn't claim to be anything other than a creepy movie, and it does this extremely well. Give us the scares, the feeling of dread, and then sends us on our way. The resolution is neither a good nor bad ending; it just "is", and feels all the more real for it.A must see, even if only once, for any horror fan.