“When a Stranger Calls” rings with the suspense of an earlier age, which makes sense, seeing as it’s a remake of the 1979 film by the same name.It begins slow, remains slow, then explodes with psycho-killer intensity. Though I didn’t particularly enjoy the film, it deserves credit for avoiding the blood and guts horror movies are known for. Rather than rely on gore, it tries to seduce audiences into an anxiety provoking cat-and-mouse game. Its style is more reminiscent of Alfred Hitchcock – though cinemagraphically it doesn’t measure up – than, say, “Friday the 13th.” It even plays on Hitchcock’s most terrifying moment: The shower scene. (Enough said, lest I reactivate the trauma I suffered from watching “Psycho” at too early an age.)Back to the movie: In its opening scenes, we see houses next to an amusement park. We hear an unseen baby sitter answer a series of phone calls from her stalker. Meanwhile, we watch colorful, spinning lights on rides and hear carnival music. Then, a man’s shadow appears in a window of one of the houses, bends down violently – and the scene cuts to bumper cars running into each other, a merry-go-round spinning dizzily, screams from crowds at the park and a single red balloon floating upward. Only a body bag and a police chief’s sickened reaction confirm the crime.Then the movie sweeps us 125 miles away to one of those many Parade of Homes mansions that populate the mountains of Colorado. About the only thing of interest for the next 30 minutes is the house itself.

Most of the 90-minute screen time features baby sitter Jill Johnson (Camilla Belle), who carries the anemic plot sufficiently. Compared to the other stereotyped characters, she at least brings an anomaly to the film: She’s a baby sitter who doesn’t check on the kids for hours – until the heavy-breathing slayer calls and suggests she do so.The girl sitting next to me jumped and whimpered eight times during the movie, but I suspect it was more a result of wanting to get closer to her boyfriend than the actual intensity of the movie. Still, it’s probably a bad idea for Future baby sitters of America to watch this movie – especially if they’ll be sitting in trophy homes. But for the general public, the after-effects aren’t as haunting as Hitchcock’s.He said: ‘Can you hear me now? Good!’The trouble with “When a Stranger Calls” is it’s all about suspense, and it’s hard to build much of that in an 83-minute rush job.

It doesn’t help that when the stranger calls, he doesn’t really do anything that terrifying – such as keeping teenage baby-sitter Jill Johnson (actress Camilla Belle) on the line after she’s already exceeded her cell phone minutes.What she hears is mostly just a lot of heavy breathing. That unnerves Jill, but since there’s only an hour and 20 minutes to build the alleged suspense, Jill’s freaking out and dialing the cops by about call No. 3. Is the mystery caller jilted boy-toy Bobby (Brian Geraghty), eurocreep Dr. Mandrakis (Derek de Lint), her own vaguely scary dad (Clark Gregg), or none of the above? A better question is, did no one involved in this after-school special see the original “Scream,” which 10 years ago achieved in its first 15 minutes what “When a Stranger Calls” couldn’t do in its entirety?(By the way, if none of those names sounds familiar, it’s because you’ve never heard of any of these scrubs, and you probably never will again. At least until Belle shows up in Maxim.)Forget Hitchcock, or even Craven or Carpenter: This script needs a hip, smart update to acknowledge at least one or two of the changes in communication technology that have occurred since 1979. But “When a Stranger Calls” is so out of touch it makes 2004’s dopey “Cellular” look like an Orwellian masterpiece by comparison.On the other hand, director Simon West does deserve a lot of credit for correctly placing the 719 area code in Colorado.

Despite the killer line I found chilling when my sister told me about the 1979 original – “Have you checked on the children yet?” – the remake of “When a Stranger Calls” lacks any kind of scary punch except for a couple of cheap quick-cut scares from its checklist of horror-movie cliches. It has the black cat, the carnival rides, the glass-walled house, the automatic lights, the many possibilities that would explain who the titular stranger might be. I kept waiting for one of the random scare tactics to relate to another one. Maybe I’ve watched too many sophisticated horror movies along the lines of “The Blair Witch Project” or the “Evil Dead” cycle. But they seem to work better when it isn’t random, when one of the herrings isn’t red, when the director brings one of the setups he painstakingly crafted to fruition.Luckily, though, a movie doesn’t have to be good to spawn a sequel these days, so they can always iron out the kinks in “When a Stranger Calls Back.”Or “When a Stranger Calls – And You’re Roaming.”Now that’s scary.

‘When a Stranger Calls’Where: Skyline Cinema, DillonRated: PG-13 for intense terror, violence and some language.She says: two-and-a-half starsHe says: half-star