Can someone help me identify the name of this movie?
Release: Late 70s-mid 90s, made during that timeframe. I think it’s more late 80s, early 90s.
Setting: Night-time, a house/cottage in the middle of the woods.
Plot Summary
The woman is alone at home waiting for her husband, when a strange man comes to her door. Eventually she lets him in, and the whole film is the two of them stuck in this argument/game of wits. Both are trying to test each other. They both accuse each other of being dangerous, or maybe murderers. As the movie progresses you start to get the feeling she actually knew who this person was all along, and they had been pretending in the beginning.
Eventually you realize he’s “psychotic” and while trying to escape you realize she’s stuck, I think I recall some really weird sci fi element where it felt like the house and forest were being watched and monitored. She returns to the house, and has to answer the door again and it’s that same person as before, pretending he doesn’t know her. He keeps showing up to the house and trying to put her through all these scenarios he acts out or proposes.
It starts off feeling like a Thriller/Mystery and then around the end it throughs some Sci-Fi/Psychological Horror into the mix.
I’ve been trying to find out what the movie is for so long.
The two actors as white, though I forget most of what the man looked like. I think he wore a nice suit and had a hate. I don’t believe he had any facial hair. The facial features I can’t recall though. The woman had brown hair that was large and wavy. She slightly reminded me of Geena Davis for some reason.
I am almost positive that the movie is The Caller from 1987. I just picked up a DVD of the movie a few weeks ago at the flea market. I had never heard of the movie before, but it starred Malcolm McDowell and was a thriller from the 1980’s so I definitely thought it worth a dollar to check it out.
The Caller is a two person suspense thriller. Almost like a stage play that takes place almost entirely in a remote cabin in the woods. A cat-and-mouse verbal mind game between two characters played by Malcolm McDowell and Madeline Smith Osborne (an terrific actress I don’t recall seeing before). Throughout most of the movie, you aren’t quite sure who was menacing who. McDowell shows up at the woman’s door one night and asks to use her phone. He claims to have broken down nearby. She claims to be preparing dinner for someone (who never shows up). She very reluctantly agrees to let him into her house to call for a tow truck, then the two begin their verbal battle. They talk and talk and talk, each one seeming to catch the other in little lies. Clearly both seem to be hiding secrets and you begin to wonder if they really are strangers. Is the woman in danger from this man? (McDowell is very menacing, but not in an overt way.) Is she hiding some dark secret about her husband and daughter? It is a nifty little thriller. I was surprised I had never read about it or stumbled across it before because I love these kind of movies.
You can watch the complete movie on youtube.