One Missed Call

Alright, I've been on a sort of Asian movie tear lately. I can't explain it, maybe it's the fact that these movies expect me to think a little bit and not explain everything that's happening or maybe it's the fact that, being made by a different culture entirely, they have an added mystique that fascinates me. Either way, they tend to be just really great movies! This time, it's a cursed cell phone, in One Missed Call.



Here's the story: You get a call on your cell phone, the ring isn't yours and when you look at the incoming call, it's from you! When the call disconnects you find that you have one missed call (hence the name of the movie) and you have a voice mail. The voice is yours and it's from the exact time of your death...you get to listen to yourself die, and the time code on the call is from the future, so you know the exact time and date of your own death! And after you die, a person who's number is in your phone gets the next call from themselves. It's all very weird, but with the Japanese fascination with technology, I suppose that a cursed cell phone was inevitable.

While this might sound like a bit of a laugh, but it's actually a very scary movie. The cell phone calls at first are mocked by people, but as it becomes more and more apparent that this is real, the tension mounts. Then, when a girl who received a call is grabbed by the media for a live show at the time of her death, everyone in the country is watching as she is killed in an incredibly spectacular way...I hate to give it away but let's just say to be decapitated by one of your own body parts...it's pretty gory and cool! This is pretty much going where you think, one of the potential victims and a brother of another victim must team up to unravel the mystery of the curse and find a way to stop it.

I'm giving One Missed Call three and a half out of four cigars,

and it only lost a half a cigar for two reasons, one, it runs just a little long, running at just under two hours, I felt like it dragged on just a bit before the dramatic climax, and two, I'm getting a little tired of the long black haired spectre who's killing people. I understand that this is a Japanese thing and it was pretty scary the first couple of times, but it seems that every spectre coming from the Land Of The Rising Sun looks like the last...give us something a bit different...PLEASE!!! So, until next time, when I'll wet myself down and have all my hair hanging in my face...just to scare you, remember that the best movies are bad movies!