Jill Johnson has been a naughty girl and has run way over her cell phones minutes trying to work things out with her loser boyfriend who cheated on her, so her parents are grounding her and forcing her to babysit to pay them back for the overage. She has to miss the big bonfire that is sure to be the party of the year at her school and instead, she has to babysit the children of a really rich doctor and his wife who live in a secluded, but magnificent home on the lake. Well, little Miss Jill will certainly be cured of her need to chat on the phone by the time this evening ends.
During the course of the evening, someone begins calling the house, sometimes just breathing on the line, sometimes asking things like, “Have you checked the children?,” and such. Eventually, after a long and drawn out evening, police discover that the calls are coming from inside the house. Now, I had a hard time buying into this whole thing. First off... caller ID? Hello? Then, why does this girl keep answering the phone? Let the jackass go to voicemail already. But aside from the forced plotline that really doesn’t work, there’s the fact that the movie simply wasn’t scary. There are “jump scares” that really weren’t scary. The cat rushes in, a coat and hat appear to be a person behind the door -- it all just doesn’t work to build up the suspense. Plus, the house was a “smart house”, equipped with light sensors such that the lights turn on automatically when you walk into a room, leaving open the possibility of a lot of scary moments that could have been, but just weren’t utilized.
Even during the climax of the movie where Jill is being chased by the madman through the house, I found it somewhat silly. Basically, the movie didn’t scare me or even leave me on edge. Although it had a few tense moments, they were few and far between and not enough to redeem it. The acting isn’t bad, it’s just that the plot and the way it spins out are just not believable. Skip this one.
