ONE MISSED CALL Review
One Missed Call is a ghost of a movie: no heart, no soul, no emotions, and only the faintest resemblance to a living, breathing motion picture.
I confess to not seeing Takashi Miike's original rendition of the novel by Yasushi Akimoto, which was released four years ago in Japan. In his review for Twitch, logboy wrote that "the major fault is the clearly commercial intent in the production ... there are only a few glimpses of Miike on display." Mark Schilling of The Japan Times pointed out that Chakusin Ari (AKA You've Got a Call) was clearly inspired by the success of the Korean film Phone, which in turn bore striking similarities to the granddaddy of them all (as far as the late 90s horror-through-technology boom), Ringu. Schilling described the final act as Miike sending the film "hurling into a surreal universe."
If only US remake director Eric Valette could have done likewise. Instead, saddled with a PG-13 rating and a dearth of imagination, this version of One Missed Call made me wish that someone called me with a death threat so I'd have a good excuse to leave the theater.
The remake script by Andrew Klavan starts with a hospital on fire and the rescue of a little girl, screaming that her mother is still inside. Cut to years later when Shelley (Meagan Good) mysteriously dies in her backyard pond two days after receiving a disturbing cell phone message -- from herself!!! She had seen weird visions, but her friend Beth (Shannyn Sossamon) can't believe she would commit suicide, as the police have concluded.
Disbelieving friend Brian (Johnny Lewis) doesn't want to admit to seeing weird visions himself, though another friend, Leann (Azura Skye) confesses that she too received such a message. Beth tries to comfort and protect her, even as Leann sees more oddities (a masked mother and child, creepy crawly things, a masked hooded figure). Leann ends up jumping to her own death, leaping off a bridge in front of an oncoming train.
I presume you can guess the rest? Everyone is somehow linked, with one doomed person after another succumbing to the dreaded cell phone ghost, and Beth must solve the mystery before her death message ("1 missed call") arrives. In the original, she joined with a funeral parlor operator whose sister appeared to be the first victim, but the remake converts that character into a police detective played by Ed Burns.
The most disquieting element of the entire film, in fact, is the presence of both Ed Burns and Shannyn Sossamon. Both were once very promising actors. The last role of any substance played by Burns came in 2003's Confidence; has he accepted parts only to finance his own films, which have distressingly diminished in quality over the years? He seems to be an affable fellow who continues to attract actors of note to his projects, but on screen here he's very dry (as in, all the juice is squeezed out) and dispirited, way out of proportion to the character requirements.
As for Ms. Sossamon, she does as much as can be expected from the material. She plays a character with a damaged childhood, but is given little opportunity to reveal the damage done, or allow it to affect her actions in any way. It feels like an affectation grafted onto the role in a shorthand attempt to give the character depth.
The plot is far too schematic, which results in a total lack of tension -- it's the kind of movie where, for example, Beth removes the batteries from both her own and Leann's cell phones to make sure they don't receive any more messages and then -- SPOILER!! (not really) -- one of the cell phones ring anyway. It's a movie where characters say, "Ooh, that's creepy!" but you never feel creeped out.
The core problem is that none of the ghostly happenings have any basis in reality, alternate or otherwise. If you don't know the rules of your particular universe, if anything random can occur at any time, why would any of those events surprise, startle, or scare you?
Oh, and add to the list of missed opportunities the casting of the great Ray Wise as a mercenary television producer. He arranges an on-air live exorcism of the ghost in the cell phone of yet another doomed friend of Beth -- a scene that cries out for extravagant visions and delivers confused nothingness -- and made me wish that the movie had been built around his character.
Also wasted is Margaret Cho as a clueless police detective. She only gets to deliver one good line: when Burns insists that the threatening cell phone messages are real and Beth needs protection, Cho barks out: "Tell her to call customer service!"
Good advice, indeed. What's the phone number for the filmmakers?
One Missed Call opened wide in the US on Friday. It's due to open in Singapore next week and in Europe and South America over the next two months. Japan is not spared; a release is scheduled there for May 17.
