Producers outnumber cast members in the opening titles of this lamer than lame remake of the 2003 Takashi Miike RINGU-variation – itself based on a novel and sequelised in its native Japan. You expect a movie like this to be peopled with wasted veterans (like Ray Wise, who deserves better), former O.C. co-stars and C-list talent, but particularly sad is that ONE MISSED CALL is directed by Eric Valette, a French filmmaker who showed considerable promise with his unique Clive Barker-inspired debut MALEFIQUE. Like the recent THE EYE remake – also directed by imported French filmmakers and also useless – this movie smacks of studio interference and is creatively anonymous from start to finish.
Clearly the intended audience of a movie like this is 13 year old mall-rats who’ll spend most of the movie glued to their own cell phones, texting friends sat a few seats away. Still, even 13 year old mall-rats deserve better than a “horror” movie that attempts to wring chills out of lines like “That’s not my ring tone!” ; just in case we didn’t know such an assertion is meant to be creepy, the film then cuts to a character lamenting “That’s creepy!”. Like other movies in this Japanese horror remake cycle (especially PULSE), ONE MISSED CALL riffs on the idea of the technology we depend upon becoming a conduit for vengeful supernatural forces. It’s too bad, however, that a cell phone is a singularly unscary source of fear, and that the movie’s main theme revolves around the shocking, earth-shattering revelation that…communication is reliant on technology (gasp!) and everyone uses their cell phone too much (shock!).
Edward Burns is among those hitting an all-time career low (and he was in THE SOUND OF THUNDER!) as a detective mundanely yanking fruity hard candies from the mouths of victims as he investigates a series of strange deaths to which he has a (cliché alert!!) personal connection. Unsmiling heroine Shannyn Sossamon was friends with a girl who received a missed call and answer phone message from a dead person, apparently calling from the near-future. Soon Sossamon is having hallucinatory visions of CG centipedes, creepy ghouls on street corners and ominous spooks on buses, while ambulance-chasing reality show producer Ray Wise, the host of “American Miracles” (“You don’t need an exorcism!”) sees a way of using the cycle of death to jack up ratings.
Burns and Sossamon are capable enough actors, but here the consistently awful dialogue dooms any opportunity to make this silliness credible. Sossamon is stuck with a lousy, reactive role typified by the various laughable moments in which she clutches her hands over her mouth in unconvincing shock having just watched yet another pal die horribly. Most of the film is devoted to the charisma-free leads running from A to B (usually with flashlights) while unveiling yet more back-story. Occasionally, the already-meandering story stops in its tracks to spell out Sossamon’s wholly pointless abuse-ridden childhood or to helpfully provide an on-screen definition of Munchausen’s Syndrome By Proxy just in case those aforementioned 13 year old mall-rats weren’t clear.
This movie may have been more fun if its PG-13 rating didn’t totally neuter the horror of its contrived, FINAL DESTINATION-inspired death scenes. But, then again, you still wouldn’t expect much from a film that trots out the old figure-walking-past-the-camera-suddenly shock at least twice and generates a fake scare from an asthma inhaler. The ghosts are the kind of CG-enhanced spooks that have become de-rigueur and were never scary to begin with, while the sarcastic humor and eccentricity of Miike’s neat original movie are nowhere to be found…with the exception of one winning line from a cynical minor character : “A ghost in her cell phone? Tell her to call Customer Service!”.
Some kind of modern genre low-point is reached at the moment where Sossamon begs “Please don’t hurt me!” to a weeping, rotted, living corpse, though by this stage in the movie all but the faithful would have tuned out, faced with the grim knowledge that more Asian horror remakes are on the way, notably A TALE OF TWO SISTERS. For details of how Hollywood fucks that one up (it’s not a big assumption to make at this stage) watch this space.
-Steven West
- Interview with J.R. Bookwalter - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Andrew J. Rausch - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Rick Popko and Dan West - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Director Stevan Mena (Malevolence) - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Screenwriter Jeffery Reddick (Day of the Dead 2007) - January 22, 2015
- Teleconference interview with Mick Garris (Masters of Horror) - January 22, 2015
- A Day at the Morgue with Corri English (Unrest) - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Writer/Director Nacho Cerda (The Abandoned, Aftermath) - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Actress Thora Birch (Dark Corners, The Hole, American Beauty) - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Actor Jason Behr, Plus Skinwalkers Press Coverage - January 22, 2015
