One Missed Call. by Takashi Miike. R3 HK DVD. Mini Review.

One Missed Call is the 25th Miike film I have seen. This has the potential to get lost in the archives pretty quick and I don't like long reviews because of the potential for spoilers.

The disc is a DVD-9, devoid of extras, with almost faultless english subtitles. The sound is DTS and DD, big and booming throughout. It's 99% certain this is a port of Disc 1 from the 2-Disc Japanese Issue. It doesn't appear to be re-encoded.

The film is another fascinating Miike project : mostly because it's directed by Miike. The structure is typical of the J-Horror genre, almost matching the minimalist menace of Hideo Nakata's "Ringu" and "Dark Water" or Shimizu's "Ju-On". It's a ghost story about child abuse, with an apparently menacing undercurrent and the traditional major payoff. I can see why some people relate it to "Audition", but the major fault is the clearly commercial intent in the production, seemingly led by a larger budget.

There are only few glimpses of Miike on display to keep us interested until we reach the payoff - it's possible to forget who made it. They're nice glimpses, but the film in itself is standard fare. I did like seeing yet another facet to this remarkable director.

If you want to see this for any reason I can't see any subsequent discs offering much improvement on this, unless you're very keen on extras. The disc is mastered in a very rich way, with strong whites and almost overly-strong blacks and it copes with rapid changes and movement very well.

The disc = more than adequate, suits me fine : I won't replace it. The film = disappointing, yet strangely fascinating.

A missed chance for Miike? Well, I don't think overtly commercial large-budget films offer him or the viewers / fans much. If this had been a low-budget production I think the film would've been much better off, and Miike could have made something exceptional without the need for a substantial sense of responsibility.

Thankfully, although he is moving on to more commercial work in some respects, he's obviously happier with the good work he does on little money : and there are plenty of those films. He's more suited to films which often get could lost amongst the other V-Cinema releases, where there's freedom for his ideas, but which shine despite the restrictions facing him. Still, I do hope for the more commercially-oriented employers offer him more freedom as time goes on.