Plot
On one side of town, a babysitter and the kids she is babysitting are brutally murdered. The police find that the murderer used his bare hands to tear them to shreds. The shot then changes to teenager Jill Johnson (Camilla Belle) who is going through a teenage crisis, having her boyfriend, Bobby (Brian Geraghty), cheat on her with her best friend Tiffany (Katie Cassidy), and going over 800 minutes on her cell phone, for which her dad, Ben (Clark Gregg), has her babysit for a wealthy family to pay the debt. The unfortunate timing causes Jill to miss out on a school bonfire which her other best friend, Scarlett (Tessa Thompson), is attending. Jill arrives at the elaborate Mandrakis House, which has a greenhouse built in the center. The parents (Derek de Lint and Kate Jennings Grant) show her around and give her their numbers, stating that they won't be back until midnight. As the kids are seen to be upstairs asleep, Jill soon begins to receive anonymous phone calls.
Tiffany visits but Jill, fearing getting into further trouble, asks her to leave. However, tree branches knocked down by the storm outside block the road. When Tiffany gets out to move them, she is attacked by an unknown figure. The calls continue, each one becoming more alarming, suggesting she is being watched. Jill calls the police, who tell her they can trace the calls if she is able to keep him on the line for one minute. Whilst waiting for the caller to ring, Jill sees someone in the guesthouse. After seeing a light switch on, Jill quickly makes her way back to the house. The phone rings, after which the police hurriedly inform her that the calls are coming from inside the house.
Jill finds Tiffany's dead body in the upstairs bathroom whilst investigating an active shower, and is soon attacked. She gets the kids and they run into the greenhouse. Jill finds the housemaid dead as the attacker breaks in. They quickly escape and Jill manages to lock the man inside the greenhouse, but he finds an exit and attacks Jill. There is a struggle and Jill manages to burn the man's back and and stab him in the hand with an iron poker, before rushing out of the house into the arms of a police officer.
As the stranger is taken by the police, his face is shown by the moonlight. Jill awakens in the hospital and the phone rings. She lets it ring, worrying that the events will reoccur. She waits for a time then nervously picks up the phone. As she hears nothing and begins to place the phone down, the camera pans to her reflection in the mirror, revealing the stranger to be behind her. The man grabs Jill, who screams hysterically, waking up from her hallucination and finding herself still in the hospital. The film ends with the doctors desperately trying to stop her frantic panicking, leaving the viewer to wonder if the events cost Jill her sanity.
Read more about this topic: When A Stranger Calls (2006 Film)
Famous quotes containing the word plot:
“There saw I how the secret felon wrought,
And treason labouring in the traitor’s thought,
And midwife Time the ripened plot to murder brought.”
—Geoffrey Chaucer (1340?–1400)
“But, when to Sin our byast Nature leans,
The careful Devil is still at hand with means;
And providently Pimps for ill desires:
The Good Old Cause, reviv’d, a Plot requires,
Plots, true or false, are necessary things,
To raise up Common-wealths and ruine Kings.”
—John Dryden (1631–1700)
“After I discovered the real life of mothers bore little resemblance to the plot outlined in most of the books and articles I’d read, I started relying on the expert advice of other mothers—especially those with sons a few years older than mine. This great body of knowledge is essentially an oral history, because anyone engaged in motherhood on a daily basis has no time to write an advice book about it.”
—Mary Kay Blakely (20th century)