Jill is in trouble long before a stranger starts calling. She's 800 minutes over on her cell phone bill — gasp. Are you scared yet?

I get the funny feeling I've seen this before. Oh yeah, I think it was when I saw the first five minutes of "Scream." Only this time it takes 83 minutes to get through.

You might think this means "When A Stranger Calls" covers everything we've already seen among the surplus of horror flicks. And you probably think you're right because this is a remake of the original 1979 film with the same title. You are right.

Jill Johnson (Camilla Belle) is the damsel in distress in this PG-13 thriller about a routine baby-sitting gig gone bad. This is where the scary music comes in.

To pay back her parents for her excessive minute usage, Jill gets a job baby-sitting. The film's only saving grace is the cool house where the whole debacle takes place.

Huge — of course. We all know rich people who live out in the middle of nowhere are artsy. Accordingly, the house is decked out in creepy sculptures, huge paintings and neat light fixtures that automatically turn on and off when you enter or leave a room. Set back on a remote street in the woods, on a foggy lake, the house is made up almost completely of windows. All of which obviously work to the advantage of the movie's "scary" theme.

Now begins the slew of mundane horror movie clichés and fake-out scary moments.

Hey Jill, don't worry about that noise you hear, it isn't really anything until about the hundredth time you hear it.

I'm not sure how many false alarms are allowed before the audience starts to beg for the true thrill of a creepy guy in a mask jumping out from around a dark corner, but this film sucks every last drop of patience out of its viewers.

Not only do you need crackers to digest all the cheese in "When A Stranger Calls," but the cheese ends up as a side dish next to the mutilation that is the rest of the film.

The acting — awful. The music — typical. The cinematography — mediocre. But above all, the plot is the painful icing on top.

The opening scene somehow fails to later connect with the rest of the film. The sub-plots are average at best — a boyfriend who has cheated on his girlfriend with her best friend and a girl who can't quite get the running record she knows she's capable of attaining.

In the end, still none of the lame sub-plots are even attempted to be solved.

Maybe for a 14-year-old baby-sitter, it might hit a sensitive nerve. But for anyone expecting an actual scare, you will be thoroughly disappointed with the weak remake director Simon West presents.

I won't give away the ending, but I'll give you a hint. You already know what happens.