The original is much scarier than the remake (in additional to being a much better film). Carol Kane was much more convincing than Camilla Belle as the main actress and we can easily sense her loneliness and fear when she was left with the children in the house. Her large expressive eyes easily convinced us that she was genuinely afraid. In the remake, Camilla was not really left alone since the maid was there and the blond bimbo also visited her - though both were found dead later. When she received the calls, she looked perturbed or annoyed rather than frightened. She had the expression of someone who just remembered that she had forgotten to pick up the change in the supermarket.
Phone technology had changed a lot in the last three to four decades. If you have seen or used one of the old (and huge) desk dialing phone sets, their ring was so loud that it would have given you a start if it rang near you while you were concentrating on something. The ring of a new phone set is nothing compared to that – not to mention the ring tone of a cell phone. As viewed today, the movie is sadly archaic. In the film, Camilla had a ridiculous array of desk phones and cell phones. More importantly, the idea of “the killer calling from inside the house” is by now an old movie cliché that had been used and even parodied in many movies. The idea of a stranger making annoying calls is simply not scary. Now, it would be easy to trace the number and location of the call very quickly, and yet the remake decided to stretch the first 20 minutes of the original to a 90-minute film. Also, today, a girl would most likely just block calls from an unknown caller. What happens later is, of course, another story.
reply
share
Kimrubymoon
8 years ago
Haha! I agree with you about the phone's of yesteryear and that loud creepy ring. Somehow a Justin Beiber ringtone does NOT have the same effect!!!!! 😄😂😄
reply
share