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Last week, Hollywood asked, "How do you like your horror movies?" And American moviegoers replied, "Not scary!"

"Suspenseful?" Hollywood asked. "No way!" the viewers replied.

"Something creepy and original?" asked Hollywood. "No!" viewers replied. "Just give us a cheap remake of something from the '70s, with a story on a dark and stormy night, and be sure the killer calls his victims on the phone and threatens them in a sinister voice!"

Thus, Simon West's remake of the 1979 thriller When a Stranger Calls is No. 1 at the box office. With Lance Henricksen (Aliens) providing the creepy voice, and Camilla Belle (The Ballad of Jack and Rose) as the terrified babysitter, West's only notable revision to the original is the switch from land lines to cell phones.

Bob Smithouser (Plugged In) doesn't find it very scary at all. But he does say, "I'm glad … West didn't resort to the disturbing tactic many of his peers have found profitable of late: The low-budget marriage of R-rated sex and torture characterizing hits such as Saw II and Hostel. Rather, this movie is a decidedly PG-13 thriller. And even though it's a remake of a 1979 horror 'classic' involving murdered children, it had the decency to change that part of the story. Dialed back from the original, When a Stranger Calls isn't exploitative or diseased. It's just paltry, manipulative and cliché -ridden."

Having survived another lousy horror flick, mainstream critics are hanging up the phone.

It's always risky to update a classic work of literature for the screen, especially when you transplant the story's time and location. Director Mike Barker and screenwriter Howard Himelstein have done just that—moving Oscar Wilde's comedy Lady Windermere's Fan from the late 1890s to 1930, planting it against a scenic Italian background. The film stars Helen Hunt, Scarlett Johansson, Stephen Campbell Moore, and Tom Wilkinson, but their combined talents aren't enough to earn the film many good reviews.

Camerin Courtney (Christianity Today Movies) likes the location, but not the whole cast. "[Hunt] seems all wrong for this period piece. Her face doesn't even seem a good fit for the short, curly mop of hair she sports crammed under fussy little hats. And she doesn't exude the seductive confidence that would afford her the ability to live off the 'kindness' of married men. Scarlett Johansson also seems ill at ease in her clunky white shoes and boring good-girl lines. But Tom Wilkinson as Tuppy, Mrs. Erlynne's twice-divorced suitor, is a delight. He delivers his lines with the perfect blend of bite and light-heartedness."

She concludes that "it's not for everyone. The film will likely only release to art-house theaters, and if you've never darkened the door of one before, this isn't necessarily the time to start. And if your sense of humor doesn't sway to the snarky on occasion, you might also want to take a pass (though as the title suggests, at the end of the day, goodness abounds). But, if you enjoy the charming wit of films such as An Ideal Husband or Enchanted April, you'll probably be Wilde about A Good Woman."

Harry Forbes (Catholic News Service) calls it "a reasonably faithful [adaptation], but rather dank." Of the cast, he says, "Hunt is unconvincing, lacking the requisite air of glamorous mystery. Johansson fares a bit better, but in each case, their flat American intonation makes you long for the standard crisp British delivery. … And so it is that several of the English supporting players … come off best, and while Howard Himelstein's script purloins several of Wilde's choice epigrams, the overall rewrite is below par. Even the 1925 silent had more inherent wit. The current version has more in common with Otto Preminger's uninspired 1949 The Fan."

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February (Web-only) 2006, Vol. 50