When a Stranger Calls is a 2006 remake of the 1979 film with the same name. In the film, a baby-sitter (Camilla Belle) receives increasingly threatening calls from who she believes to be just a prankster. The story itself is based upon a well-known urban legend.

Jill Johnson is just your average teenage girl: boyfriend issues, friend issues, and of course the big issue of running way over on the cell phone bill. To make up for this, Jill's dad makes her babysit for a rich family in the middle of nowhere. It seemed like the perfect job: fridge full of food, kids already asleep (they're recovering from the flu) and a huge house to explore.

But Jill soon begins to hear strange noises, and receives irritating and frightening calls from a stranger that breathes creepily into the phone. Could it be her boyfriend Bobby's friend Cody messing around? Or her best friend Tiffany, who visits the house in an attempt to apologize to Jill for kissing Bobby? Or is it Todd, the family's college-aged son who lives in the guest house through the woods from the house? Or even Rosa, the housekeeper who is seemingly too busy to watch the kids for the night? Jill eventually calls the police, they say they will trace the call if he calls again.

Jill doesn't know, but soon Rosa disappears, and she sees someone inside of the guest house. She goes there to find nothing, except seeing a light come on in Rosa's room. She races back to the house and goes up to Rosa's room. The police call and says the call was made inside the house! Then she finds Tiffany dead in Rosa's bathroom. Frightened, Jill gets the two young kids. When they're about to leave the bedroom, Jill sees the stranger on top of a rafter in their open wooden ceiling.

Jill and the children lock themselves in the kids' playroom and escape down to the indoor glass shielded water garden / atrium. The stranger makes it downstairs again and attacks Jill, who is underwater, while the kids run to the door, which is locked. Jill finds Rosa's dead body in the water. Jill traps the man in the atrium (ripping some of her hair out in the process) and finds the kids in the fireplace. They all run for the door, but the stranger broke out and is right on their tail. The kids make it out, but Jill is forced back. She fights the stranger, and eventually stabs his hand with a fire poker, pinning him to the floor. She dashes faster than she ever has before, out the door and into the hands of the police officer. The police catch the famous murderer of fifteen people in many different states.

Later, as Jill is recovering in the hospital, she finds herself alone with a ringing phone echoing through the halls. She turns around to see the stranger reflected behind her in the mirror. She screams and screams, but this was just a dream, and doctors run in to assist her as she cries "He's in the house! He's in the house!!"...

For the release of the film, AOL Instant Messenger ran ads beckoning users to IM Jill020306. When messaged, "Jill" (a Colloquis-style program) made small talk before panicking, as she received calls from a stranger, asking her to check the children. She then gives the user her phone number (a toll-free 877 number) and asks them to call her. When users call, they hear an ad for the movie. Like many automated messaging agents, "Jill" is easily confused, which resulted in some unintentionally hilarious moments —

Jill: i think i am going crazy. look, all my friends r at a party - u need 2 call me and listen in on this call.
User: how you doing?
Jill: i'm doing great. u?

Sometimes other glitches occur, such as Jill asking what she should do before telling the user that a stranger is calling her.

Also, around the time of the DVD release, a new screen name appeared, Jill051606, to tie in with the DVD release date, May 16, 2006. It does not involve calling her, but instead she directs you to a video security system on the official DVD site where the shadow of the stranger passes by frequently.

Critical consensus was disastrous with the average grade on Yahoo! Movies being a "D", despite the film's 21.6 million dollar opening setting the record for a movie opening on Super Bowl XL weekend (February 3 - February 5). The biggest criticism of the remake was that it gave away the moment of suspense from the original by revealing the source of the calls in the previews.

As of February 26, 2006, the film grossed a total of 45.7 million dollars in the domestic box office.

The movie was released on May 16, 2006 for PSP and DVD. Special features include two commentaries (one with Camilla Belle and Simon West; the other with Jake Wade Wall), deleted scenes, a 20-minute making-of featurette, and trailers.

In May 2006, a sequel was greenlit by Screen Gems. The film is currently slated for a 2007 release.