When a Stranger Calls Trailer Review

‘When a Stranger Calls,’ is a thriller and contains lots of suspense. The tension in the trailer informs us what type of horror film it is. The film is about a girl who has to babysit at a house quite far from where she lives. The house is isolated with only the two children and maid in the house with her, no one else is to be seen around. The girl receives several phone calls during her time at the house, one is simply a prank call from one of her friends but, many of the other calls are from an unknown caller. When ‘the stranger calls,’ there’s either no noise or a strange breathing sound at the other end. Scared, the girl calls the police who trace the call back to inside the house.

Horror is achieved from the very beginning of the trailer which shows very sudden and quick flashbacks of close up faces, in black and white, and a silhouette of a man. The screen goes blank and all we can hear is the girl’s voice asking if anyone’s there. This creates horror because we don’t know if anyone is there, what the girl is looking at or what we are going to see next. To our surprise, we see a car driving on a long, quiet road on a nice day and the huge house standing alone, hidden in the trees. This is a convention of horror films, when everything starts off normal and ok but then things begin to go wrong. Horror is also created through the use of text, slow, blank cuts which speed up like a heartbeat, telephone ringing, dialogue and the camera getting closer as the trailer goes on.

The trailer uses typical horror film props, such as sharp objects etc... Other codes and conventions in this trailer are the character; a young girl on her own in an isolated house, who is the victim and a mysterious man who is the villain. The typical setting of the large, isolated house creates horror. The diegetic sound of dialogue on the phone and the breathing of the villain as well as the fast breathing of the victim build tension and create horror. Diegetic sound of screaming also creates horror. The non diegetic sounds of the heart monitor and sinister sounds also create horror; the use of sound like this is conventional of horror films.