The Plot
Beth (Shannyn Sossamon) is having issues with her cell phone. She didn't run out of minutes or forget her charger in a hotel room; her problem is much more serious -- deadly serious. You see, her friends have been receiving mysterious voice mail messages that seem to be from their future selves at the time of their deaths. Unfortunately for them, we're not talking 50 years in the future; more like 50 hours. When four of her friends end up dying at the exact time shown on their cell phones as the time of the messages, it becomes clear that these calls should be taken seriously. (On the bright side, though, it's much easier now for Beth to pick her "Fave Five.")
When Beth herself receives "the call," the game is on, and she has three days to track down the source of the otherworldly call and stop it before she kicks the bucket -- and with so many minutes remaining! Aiding her in her search is police detective Jack Andrews (Ed Burns), who believes Beth's outrageous story because his sister died under similar circumstances. Together, they unravel a mystery involving an abused child, a burned-down hospital and more nonsensical plot points than you can shake a Bluetooth at.
The End Product
One Missed Call mines the conventions of J-horror ghost stories, resurrecting the thematic "curse" of films like The Ring and The Grudge -- this time attaching the hex not to a video tape or a house, but rather to a cell phone. As silly as the plot sounds, there's an element of genius (Perhaps "genius" is too strong a word; how about "non-hamfistedness?") in the concept of a curse affixing itself to a device that so many of us can't live without and being passed along through cell phone address books like a virus.
Of course, the concept was dealt with by much steadier hands in the original movie, directed by cult icon Takashi Miike (Audition, Ichi the Killer). Abnormally "by the books" for a Miike film, the original nonetheless featured a boldness lacking in the remake, helmed by French director Eric Valette. Gone is the uncompromising twist ending, gone are some of the gory details, gone is the in-depth look into the heroine's own troubled past that ties in with the story's climax. Instead, Valette throws in canned "scary images" that serve no purpose other than boosting the spooky quotient (they doesn't work), and screenwriter Andrew Klavan ties up the ending with a ridiculously Hollywood, borderline Disney bow.
As with the original, questions abound regarding the logistics of this curse (What if you don't "miss" the call and instead just answer the phone? Doesn't anyone have a land line listed in their cell phone address book? What if someone has the number to the local pizza parlor listed? Would there be a bunch of dead Luigis in the morgue?), but the original was engrossing enough that we overlooked such head-scratchers.
There's no bigger indicator of the quality of One Missed Call, though, than the cast. Sossamon and Burns are simply two of the dullest actors working today, Sossamon appearing to have just popped a handful of Lunesta and Burns seeming to be perpetually disinterested, as if pondering what's become of his career since The Brothers McMullen. Even if the original film's plot made little sense and was derivative of the J-horror films that preceded it, it's still leaps and bounds ahead of this shallow husk of a remake.
The Skinny
- Acting: D (Sossamon + Burns = zzzzz...)
- Direction: D+ (Practically scareless and, apart from the opening scene, humorless.)
- Script: D (Plot holes spackled with Hollywood sentimentality.)
- Gore/Effects: C (The PG-13 rating allows little room for shock.)
- Overall: D (The worst of the Asian horror remakes to date. Yes, even worse than The Ring 2!)
One Missed Call is directed by Eric Valette and is rated PG-13 for intense sequences of violence and terror, frightening images, some sexual material and thematic elements.
