Silent Number (1993) Online

Silent Number was made as Jamie Blanks' final short for the VCA (Victorian College of the Arts). It tells the story of a babysitter who receives phone calls wanting help. When a man knocks on the front door covered with blood needing to use her phone, she becomes freaked out...

And while the film looks slick (as Urban Legends and Valentine do also), the story has been done to death. Think When A Stranger Calls, Are You Alone In The House, When A Stranger Calls Back and countless other shorts that most of us have seen too.

Jamie Blank has talent, he just needs a clever horror script to show his potiential. His previous 2 features have been trashy films, that said, they both were enjoyably trashy films.

As for Silent Number, its probably too cliched to be considered good, but is is a sign of things to come.

this review contains spoilers.

The previous 2 reviews were fair in chiding this short film for being derivative of the films they mentioned, but sadly it's WORSE than that.

The film, in fact, rips off NIGHT CALL : not only one of the best beloved episodes co-written by Serling himself, but one of the most seen, and most repeated-on-TV-episodes. When choosing a work by someone else to plagiarize, few choices could be as rock-stupid as this one.

http://www.IMDb.com/title/tt0734598/ for NIGHT CALL reference. It's on the net, as well as THIS load of lazy-rubbish. View them both and compare.

This critique is neither arguable, nor against any IMDb guidelines, as the definition of plagiarism in film/TV was legally decided by the case of Harlan Ellison v James Cameron, with Cameron accused of ripping an Ellison story which was produced into a famous TV episode, in which Cameron LOST.

In the case of this embarrassing-rip-off, it was worse. the story follows the same beats, and changes nothing but the location/nationality of the characters, and their respective ages. There is more difference between Man Thing and Swamp Thing than between this sleazy sleight of hand and NIGHT CALL.

The one kind thing to say is that it was impeccably-shot, colored, and edited. A are TV ads for Wal-Mart.

Aussie film-maker Blanks evidently loves his horror films but he has yet to come up with something original...the nearest he has managed to date is URBAN LEGEND, a greatly overrated slasherfest. VALENTINE wasn't much better. Professionally made after a fashion, but still no more than a crude blend of HELLO MARY LOU: PROM NIGHT II (1987) and MY BLOODY VALENTINE (1981)

SILENT NUMBER is so obviously a re-hash OF WHEN A STRANGER CALLS, probably the only reason this little short was never hit with a copyright writ is that hardly anyone has seen it.

A young babysitter starts to receive calls from a young boy claiming to have been locked up by his dad and needing help. She contacts the Police and lo and behold....where COULD the calls be coming from ??

C'mon Jamie, go read up on Clive Barker. When you can come up with a CANDYMAN (The ULTIMATE "urban legend" my friend) THEN, u've made it!

Jamie Blanks is a wonderful director, especially for wonderfully twisted horror films. Blanks, if his critics can see beyond the horrid Teen-Slasher flicks he's done, has a magnificent career waiting for him. He has a wonderful eye for lighting and placement of actors within a shot. Blanks has great talent for making mediocre stories (Valentine, Urban Legend) infinitely more disturbing. Now I know you are wondering how I can call them disturbing, think of it like this, would Valentine have been as scary if the director of I Know What You Did Last Summer had shot it. Would Urban Legend have had the same eerie feel if anyone else had shot it. I do not believe so and that's my only point. If you are considering watching any type of short horror/sci-fi film watch this.

Onto the movie itself, this movie has a wonderfully dark aura that is awful hard to create within a short film. Not only is the dark lighting of the film a factor, but the fact that there are few, if any close ups, aside from maybe two or three quick close ups. I'll tell you one thing; this story will make you think. Blanks gives you several clues to follow but, thankfully, because of the short nature of the film nothing is really resolved and we are left trying to figure out how everything fits together.