One Missed Call (2008) | REVIEW

Okay before I review this piece I'm gonna' go out and say that I'm not a huge fan of the horror-genre. I'm the picky type that enjoys a certain type of horror upon the various others. I like thrillers mostly. But every once in a while I like to indulge in a pure, bloody, horror-fest just to see what scariness in Hollywood means these days; just to update myself on how far a director can take his horrific visons and to what lengths he's willing to go to frighten the daylights outta' the audience. Apparently directors don't try very much these days as I was incredibly disappointed by what One Missed Call had to offer a couple of rainy nights ago. I had the perfect setting for a horror flick; midnight, no lights, rain outside, a bag of chips, and brother and a cousin. I did my part, but I guess whoever made One Missed Call forgot to bring the horror along, so we were left there like a bunch of idiots yawning and droopy-eyed, waiting for the flick to come to an end.

This Movie Is About...
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One Missed Call is the 2008 American remake of the Japanese film Chakushin Ari. Elizabeth Raymond (Shannyn Sossamon) is terrified by the deaths of four friends, three of which she personally witnessed, after they received chilling phone calls apparently from themselves in the future, showing the exact time of their deaths. After every death, a small red candy is found in the victim's mouth. Beth reports these strange occurrences to the police; however, they think she is delirious. Detective Jack Andrews (Edward Burns), however, believes her, stating that his sister died in a similar way. Together, they begin to unravel the mystery of the chain of calls, but are unsure if they can figure it out before Beth's phone starts to ring the same eerie tune.
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I admit, getting eerie voice messages that tell you the exact time of your impending doom is freaky. The basis for this story is somewhat acceptable. It would have made for a good film. I haven't watched the Japanese version but I can boldly state that it would have been way better than the American remake. Hollywood should just stop with these damn Japanese remakes and conjure their own horror. Hey, SAW worked fine and is still spawning sequels, Hostel seems to be doing great with its fans, and although I'm not a fan of either series, I'm certain they do a better job at scaring people than One Missed Call did. Let me start dissecting this flick piece by piece just so that I can tell you how bad it really is. Before that, a little bit about the movie's tagline...

One of the taglines for One Missed Call is 'When the call goes straight to voicemail, your world goes straight to hell.'

Seriously? I mean c'mon ...I've seen horrible taglines but this just kicks them all in the crotch! I'm still not sure if whoever the f*ck wrote this sh*t down meant for it to be a joke or really thought it was an intelligent tagline. It looks like something Ben Stiller would use for a nutty comedy movie which would eventually tank at the box-office. Get someone with an imagination to write a tagline next time! A tagline is a vital marketing asset, it's what people remember when they look at a poster, and it's supposed to create an interest inside their heads. Imagine if the tagline for Superman Returns read "When Superman flies, you can feel the wind blow in your face." People wouldn't watch a movie that said that...heck they'd hate the movie even before watching it if it had a tagline of that sort. See what I mean? What kind of a douchebag wrote that tagline down? Sheesh....

On to the acting. Being brutally frank, I haven't seen more straight-faced people ever in one movie. The actors in One Missed Call are intensely lame. Elizabeth is the name of the main character and she sees her friends die after receiving eerie messages of themselves on their cellphones. Watch the flick and you'll see that she shows no signs of trauma, sadness, or restlessness whatsoever. It's annoying to see someone behave so f*ckin' stiff when in reality they'd be suffering from intense hysteria! And it's not only her, by the way. The entire boatload of actors in this project are so bad at acting that you get the notion that they'd rather be someplace else. You get the feeling of detachment from the movie which causes you to not give a damn about the characters. Imagine if you hated every single character in a movie. Would you give a crap if they died? Nope. The same applies here. The story is mediocre, the horror is cheap, and the execution of the entire film is very amateurish.

With all that being said, there are but a few scary instances in One Missed Call. They're not worth watching the movie for, but they deliver a fright or two. Which brings me to the part of 'cheap horror'. It has become a popular trend these days for directors to just use hideous faces and ghoulish figures to inject fear into people and frighten them a little during a movie. They use CGI to tweak with movements of characters and the way their body suddenly juts or shudders when they walk, giving them an abnormal strut that makes them look scary or chilling. It does the job, but it's the equivalent of taking the easy way out. It's simple to get an audience to shut their eyes at the sight of a moving corpse, or bite their fingernails when a hideous creature leaps towards the hero. It's relatively easy to create a cliffhanger ending just so the audience could chatter about it after leaving the theater hall. People fail to realize that horror, like every other film genre, is an artform. It has a science to it, and an art even. It needs to be taken seriously in order for it to be wholesome, as grisly as that sounds. People like Wes Craven and Alfred Hitchcock understood that art and delivered stunning horror masterpieces that remain as benchmarks today. One Missed Call will be forgotten as soon as the next day, or after a week at most. Horror flicks seem to be the target of unknown directors eager to break into the business because it's easy to scare an audience. It's movies like these that have damaged the genre and have taken a large number of people away from it.

The only good thing about One Missed Call is its poster. That creepy poster alone gives me more chills than the entire movie. Oh, and just so you know, One Missed Call wasn't screened for critics and the press beforehand. I guess even the studios knew that this movie was gonna' bomb big at the box-office!

There's nothing much to say about One Missed Call other than it's a waste of time and money. It scares you using creepy-looking things and hideous faces, but there's nothing much to use your brain for during the movie. The story is slow, mostly boring, while the acting doesn't help the film's already suffering existence one bit. Other than one or two genuine frights and bumps, this movie is passable as a flick that does not have to be seen by anyone who knows what a good movie is. There's a whole island of good horror films out there to choose from, and unfortunately for One Missed Call, it forgot to get off the boat on that island. It's just sailing off to Boringland. Don't bother about this flick. It isn't worth your time.
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Wrap : One Missed Call gets a 0.2 out of 5.0 for the rare scares that it has in offer and for at least having an eerie-looking poster!