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Home > Movie Reviews > Film Review: One Missed Call

Film Review: One Missed Call

Jan 5, 2008 - Roger Moore

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"One Missed Call" lays bare, in a single line, the difference between formula Hollywood horror and the quietly chilling Japanese horror films Hollywood is so fond of remaking.

"So it was YOU all along!"

Somebody utters this to somebody else late in "Call," the new remake of the 2003 Takasi Miike "J-horror" film about death and doom and that international epidemic of obsessive-compulsive disorder, the cell phone. Miike's film, based (as this one is) on a Yasushi Akimoto novel, was joltingly creepy and subtly mysterious, as were the original Japanese versions of the J-horror "The Ring" and "The Grudge." But "remake" to Hollywood means "all mysteries must be solved," no matter how supernaturally silly that solution.

The premise here is hair-raising. Somebody dies. And then everybody on her cell phone's stored-numbers list gets a call. One at a time, they hear a ring tone that is not their own, answer the phone and hear their own voices utter the last words they'll say on this Earth (often followed by a scream). They see in the message field the date and exact time of their deaths. Never has "You have one voice message" seemed so spooky.

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Content Provider: Knight Ridder/Tribune Business News Copyright: (c) 2008, The Orlando Sentinel (Fla.). Distributed by Mclatchy-Tribune News Service.