While baby-sitting in an unfamiliar isolated home, a high schooler (Camilla Belle) is menaced by a creepy phone-caller. Simon West’s remake of the 1979 thriller is standard genre fare: windy night, bad phone connections, the occasional power outage, creaky floors — and the same old tired plot of a girl being terrified. What is new — and this may be the only reason to see this otherwise pointless flick — is the fabulous house, a post-modern glass box (the better to see you through) with lights that flick on by motion detectors, creepy art, far too many remote-controlled devices and — this is important — a self-contained koi-pond/canary-cage biosphere. It’s as if a maniac is loose in the pages of Architectural Digest. (AH)

This article appears in Feb 9-15, 2006.

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