When a Killer Calls

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.
Hmmm...
"Have you checked on the girl?"
—The Caller

When a Killer Calls is a 2006 Slasher Film released by The Asylum, the company's rip-off of (what else?) the When a Stranger Calls remake released the same year.

Just after sunset, a woman named Linda Hewitt and her two young children, Holly and Ryan, are brutally butchered by a sadistic knife wielding psychopath, who documents the family's deaths and the moments leading up to them with his camera phone. After the slaughter, the killer methodically washes up, and leaves.

Elsewhere, a young woman named Trisha Glass, former babysitter for the Hewitts, has taken a sitting job for the Hewitts' friends the Walkers, who are on their way to a speaking engagement and in need of someone to look after their young daughter, Molly. As Trisha and Molly get to know each other, the Walkers leave, but on the way to their appointment, are murdered by the Hewitts' killer, who they stopped to aid upon spotting his pulled over car, and who they obviously knew. With the Walkers dead, the killer disposes of their bodies, and heads to their home, killing their neighbor, Charlie, when he arrives. During this time, the killer begins sending creepy phone calls and text messages to Trisha, starting with just heavy breathing before escalating to threats. Trisha initially thinks nothing of this, dismissing the calls as jokes, possibly perpetrated by her boyfriend Matt, but as they continue, she calls the police, who inform her that they may be able to trace the caller's location if he continues his harassment.

Put at ease by this, Trisha is overjoyed when Matt shows up, but that quickly turns to disappointment when he reveals he has dragged his obnoxious stoner friend Frank, and Frank's equally over the top girlfriend Chrissy, along with him, due to the two needing to lie low after Frank pulled a gun on some rival punks outside a bowling alley. As both couples decide to get comfortable and wait out both the police who are after Frank, and an oncoming storm, the killer enters the house after sending Trisha photos of his victims, and begins to stalk and systematically whittle down the stragglers, while still continuing to taunt Trisha, saying he is doing this all for her, that he will eventually get to her too, very soon.

Tropes used in When a Killer Calls include:

"He doesn't act in the film so much as he just sort of hangs out in it, and nearly all of his lines are delivered in a sort of muttering, half-assed manner. It's pretty much the exact way I would act if I was the lead actor in a direct to video movie about yet another escaped mental patient hacking up some folks in an isolated house. I was completely entranced by his pseudo-performance throughout the entire film."

"This is terrible."

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