One Missed Call is the cinematic equivalent to a beer that has been left open all night ' flat and spoiled. While it does have a few notable scares, the end is enough to put anyone off, literally. Sadly, One Missed Call is yet another Japanese horror movie remake.
Beth, played by Shannyn Sossamon, is a psychology student whose friends keep dying under mysterious circumstances. They have all received a phone call of their last words before they die. Detective Andrews (Edward Burns) is the brother of one of the victims and starts investigating these deaths. Eventually he meets Beth, and the two of them work together to find the reason for the tragedies.
Unfortunately, there is a lot to dislike about the movie. All of the characters other than Beth and Detective Andrews are just cannon fodder, and the audience is given barely enough time to even learn their names before they are killed off, which might not be totally bad because all of the characters are extremely one-dimensional. When watching the movie, you will feel like you have seen all of them before.
Far worse than the characters, though, is the ending. The movie does not so much end as stop. A teenage girl asked in the theater, as the end credits rolled, That's not the ending
right? There is no conclusion, and it leaves the audience feeling totally confused.
The worst part about One Missed Call is that it has a few shining moments. It would be unjust to completely trash this movie. There is a scene in an air duct that is suspenseful and positively creepy with amazing make-up effects. The entire climax of the movie is adequately claustrophobic and finally pulls the audience into the movie after 75 minutes of boredom.
There is an attempt to show Beth's back-story, but it goes hilariously awry. We learn that she has an ingrained fear of her mother that means she is intensely afraid of peep holes. Not only is this the most unnecessary fear in human history, but it is only incorporated a few times into the movie and not to scare the audience. - 17
Archives
Chris Bruce
