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41%
Overall Rating
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Ranked #2,942
...out of 20,704 movies
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What if your life depended on answering your cell phone? What if you knew when, where and how you are to die? What if you had chosen to answer that One Missed Call? It begins innocently enough, a call unanswered on a cell phone. But the voice mail is from you--three days in the future--and the sound you hear is your own as you are being murdered. It starts with one call, but that's not the end in this bone-chilling tale of terror. Should you pick up the cell phone? Can you do anything to change your fate? Do you want to know the time, place and way you are to die?
--Amazon
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Can you think of anything more boring than that voice that guides you through the voicemail process on your phone? It's many times the same voice that you hear when you reach someone else's voicemail. It has no life. No emotion. It's just there. Can you think of anything more boring than that voice? I can too - "One Missed Call". You know - January is always the worst time for films, especially horror films. It's when the studios dump out the worst of the worst - the films that only have a chance of succeeding when the competition is at the same level. "One Missed Call" is so bad that I would dare say the month of January deserves better. It's like "The Ring" meets "The Grudge" with a little "Final Destination" thrown in for added measure. It's a pointless, horribly executed piece of garbage that started my 2008 off in a miserable way. You always hope you're going to stumble upon that one January horror film that just got shuffled away into oblivion, that horror film that surprises you and really delivers. "White Noise" was one of those films for me. Hear me when I tell you this - "One Missed Call" is unforgivably bad. It's the first film I have seen in the new year and it has already cemented itself a spot in the worst films list of 2008.
The deal is simple - an evil spirit has inhabited your cellular network. Random twenty-somethings find missed calls on their phones, and when they check their voicemail they hear their own voice right before they die. The missed call shows them the date and time of their death, which is almost always a couple days down the road. Beth (Shannyn Sossamon) watches as her friends slowly get picked off by this anonymous force that she can do nothing about. She enlists the help of a local detective (Ed Burns) to stop the supernatural insanity. Most of the film involves attractive college kids hearing creepy ringtones, answering their phones and then seeing weird Japanese demons all over the place, up until they meet their grisly fates. Sound familiar? We get the evil little girl from "The Ring", the same haunting entity from "The Grudge" and even a scene almost identical to the end of the first "Final Destination" film. Just when you think the film is finally over, you're dealt a horrific blow - it's not. There's another half an hour to go. Why? Beats me. Maybe so the film could use some more digital effects and try and give the audience their money's worth. This film could deliver its money's worth if it spat our gold bars at the audience throughout.
How to dissect a film that is one hundred percent crap? We'll start with this plot. It makes about as much sense as...well...just about every other Japanese horror remake. At least the others have had the decency to offer frightening visuals and an attempt at lucidity. "One Missed Call" misses logic at every turn, almost as if it's running from it. It felt like they probably used the same script as the Japanese version, but nobody bothered to translate it. There was probably one gaffer or something in a corner with a Japanese to English Dictionary, trying to make heads or tails out of it. What you see in the American version is the amount he was able to translate. To add to that, the visual effects are some of the worst I have ever seen. You've got a Japanese woman with a baby carriage and teeth for eyes, little black riding hood, a demon welder from hell and Florence Nightingale who keeps bursting into flames like she's one of Britney Spear's children. There's even an animated baby in a crib that looks like the digital dancing baby from that internet video. Last, but not least, I should probably mention that these characters do everything wrong. There are several ways one might handle a possessed telephone, but they can't seem to think of any of them. Why would they think crushing the cell phone with their foot would work when they've already seen the phone come to life with the battery removed? Would people really be that dumb in a situation like that?
Onto the performances. Ha! Performances - that's a laugh. What in God's name is Ed Burns doing in this film? Sure, he's not the creme de la creme of the acting circles these days, but he's always a bit better taste than "One Missed Call". He's awful in this role. Anyone who goes from a lead role in a Steven Spielberg film to a lead role in a film like this should be shot. Shannyn Sossamon has the life and energy or a dead Muppet, walking around aimlessly with about as much purpose as a nun in a sex shop. She just sucks the life out of every scene she's in. Character actor Ray Wise pops up in one of the worst scenes ever shot for a horror film, where he and a televangelist attempt to exercise the demon out of the cell phone, complete with the line, "I cast thee out of this cell phone! I cast thee out of this cellular phone!" Now, that's Oscar caliber writing. The best part of the film was the five minutes I got to see Johnny Lewis, walking around and doing his whole geek brooding thing he does so well. He was definite eye candy that I enjoyed. The best performance in the film comes from the cat at the opening of the picture. That cat showed more grace and poise than ten Ed Burns could have in this film. At least the cat knew what kind of shit he was in.
If all of that is not enough, I leave you with this. At the very beginning of the film, after the first chick has been killed, there is this huge party at Shannyn Sossamon's home. People are walking around, drinking, fornicating - your typical party antics. But, what are Shannyn Sossamon and her best pal Johnny Lewis doing? MAKING A SALAD. That's right. They are in the kitchen, with the bowls and the knives and the vegetables, chopping a damned salad. They even turn their salad chopping into part of the conversation. How many people leave their guests unattended so they can run into the kitchen and make a salad? How many people serve salad as an hors d'oeuvres? "One Missed Call" doesn't work in the slightest. Any time it borders on a successful scare, something ridiculous happens and ruins the moment. "One Missed Call" is your classic January release, and one the studio - Warner Brothers - should be ashamed of profoundly. It's disturbing to see a film like this find a wide release when well executed indie horror films have to scrape the bottom of the barrel for a release. This was one of the worst horror experiences I've had in ages. It's the worst horror film I've seen since "Stay Alive". In fact, "Stay Alive" was much better than this.
0/10.
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#1:
Chad
- added January 5, 2008 at 3:03am
This remake baffles me - I mean, the whole
freaking point of the original was "Japanese
horror for an American audience." Granted, that
film wasn't the greatest, so why remake it when it
wasn't that great to begin with AND it was made
for us Americans to begin with? Sheesh.
Also, while I haven't seen this one, the
original was perfectly coherent; in fact, one of
the reasons it failed was because it was *too*
dumbed down, obviously due to an Asian filmmaker
trying to adapt to American audiences.
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#2:
Crispy
- added January 5, 2008 at 4:30am
Not to make Chad jealous again, but that was a
damned entertaining review. Made me laugh out loud
more than once.
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#3:
waxtadpole3657
- added January 5, 2008 at 10:43pm
It's got a big old 0% on rottentomatoes.com right
now, and that's out of 29 reviews. This very well
may turn out to be 2008's worst film. It certainly
looks like it. Hopefully it puts the fucking nail
in the coffin of Asian remakes.
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#4:
Cryptorchild
- added January 7, 2008 at 3:15pm
I refuse to watch this peice of shit. I've seen
the trailor and it looks as though its retarded
and unorginal. Not to mention it also looked as
if they butchered Takashi Miike's orginal but
what's new with that huh?
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#5:
Chad
- added May 13, 2008 at 1:25am
I had no intentions of watching this, but since I
got to see it for free (meaning, I didn't even
have to waste a Netflix slot or use up any
bandwidth), I decided to give it a shot tonight.
Surprisingly, it wasn't anywhere near as bad as
this review made it out to be - I know, shocker of
the year, right?
As far as the film
not making sense... well, I certainly didn't have
any issues with it. Maybe having seen the
original helped in that regard, or maybe it's
because of all the Asian horror that I watch, but
I thought it was perfectly linear and wrapped up
all of the loose ends. Wait... I didn't get why
there was a jar of centipedes in the kid's room
(besides providing an excuse to use them to scare
the audience in other scenes), but besides that, I
thought the storyline was fine.
That's not to say that I loved the film - I
thought it relied way too heavily on false scares
and special effects (especially towards the end),
and yeah, this isn't going to be a bright spot on
anyone's résumé. I also thought
that the storyline was a little silly (there's a
difference between "getting it" and
loving it), but considering that this was a remake
of a film that I didn't particularly enjoy in the
first place, the fact that I got any enjoyment out
of it at all is saying something. 4.5/10 sounds
about right.
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#6:
Nirrad
- added May 13, 2008 at 2:20am
*gasp*
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#7:
bluemeanie
- added May 13, 2008 at 10:11am
Yeah...this makes you legally retarded. Period.
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#8:
Tristan
- added May 13, 2008 at 4:00pm
I'll be honest, I have no intentions of seeing
this movie, but after Chad's comment, I'm a bit
curious.
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#9:
Nirrad
- added May 13, 2008 at 4:22pm
No no, check out my comment on your worst of 2008
list. It's pretty bad. Maybe not a 0/10, but
probably a 1.5/10...ha.
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#10:
Chad
- added May 13, 2008 at 7:14pm
Just be glad the woman didn't comment here - she
loved this movie. I thought it was alright, but
she *loved* it.
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