Who's in It: Camilla Belle, Tommy Flanagan, Clark Gregg
The Basics: The Baby Sitter (Belle) is alone in the house and the phone calls begin, and it's the Stranger (Flanagan, with great serial-killer facial scarring), and these calls, they're all ominous and stuff, and the Stranger keeps going, "Have you checked the children?" And then all heck — not hell, because this is the stupidly, bloodless PG-13 remake — breaks loose, because the calls are coming from inside the house.
What's the Deal? Somebody must have done some market research where they learned that Not Scary movies fill a kind of demographic niche. Like, there's a whole flock of people out there who will just wander into any movie with any ominous title on it, starring anyone, and they'll sit and watch it and go, "Wow, I sure did get my 10 bucks worth of Not Scary out of that Not Scary movie!"
And Now I Will Begin the Spoilers: Here come the spoilers, kids … No, seriously, I'm about to ruin the ending and some other useless details about this movie … I mean it … It deserves to be ruined and you deserve to keep your money … OK, I warned you …
Spoiler 1: Because it's PG-13, there is almost no killing in this Not Scary movie. And everyone knows that if you can't have fear, you need gore. But not here. You get two off-camera killings of two characters who barely matter. Worse, the original, superior, actually frightening version of this movie has two horrifying child murders in it, but guess which two people get to live this time around?
Spoiler 2: The Stranger is just some dude. You're hoping that it's Clark Gregg, who plays Camilla Belle's character's dad, because that would have given it the sick, modern twist you assumed that anyone who dared to remake a modern classic of the horror genre would have had the nerve to add. But it's not. It's just some guy.
And Another Thing: Dear Stupid Movie Directors, never rely on a cat jumping out of a closet or a sprinkler system that — shockingly! — begins to squirt water for your movie's jolts ever again. These are not frightening moments, no matter how loudly the THX announces them.