One Missed Call - 2008
We all know what is scary. It’s an instinct, secured within our psyche, as much a part of being human as conversing with your peers or having the ability to walk erect. Fear is not something you can easily turn off, and not something you can control. So it is beyond me how so many horror movies are not scary. It is simply a matter of showing us what we fear on screen. The Blair Witch Project showed us nothing and it was terrifying. The occasional misfire is expected in cinema, and it is to be forgiven. But no other genre has so many dead ends as does that of horror. And the only thing worse than an un-scary horror film is a remake that results in one.
There is not much more pedestrian than a remake and today they are too many to count. I’m sure it’s possible but such drudgeries are not worthy of my time. Even more disturbing is the endless stream of Asian horror remakes starting, to my recollection at least, with The Ring, which is a moody and effective film and not since then has its success been matched. It seems Asian horror cinema has a thing for terror spawning from technology. I suppose that this movement as a whole could be an allusion to the hatred and destruction spawned by modern machinery and how, one day mankind will fall victim to their own creations. Unfortunately for the viewer, One Missed Call offers us nothing nearly as deep and subversive as that, it instead descends into pure camp; and not the good kind.
The premise is simple enough; you receive a voicemail message that turns out to be that of your own death and then within a few days you die; the curse then spreads to the next unsuspecting technological patron. We join a group of twenty-something’s living their life, going to school and work, totally unsuspecting of the cell phone signal from hell that is about to befall them!!! It all begins when one of the young women drowns and people naturally suspect suicide as prior to her accident she was becoming increasingly psychotic. After her death, the phenomenon begins to spread throughout the group, until Beth played by the beautiful Shannon Sossamon, who unfortunately takes this role nowhere, decides to investigate before she becomes next. She teams up with a detective (Edward Burns) whose sister is a victim of the same sinister event and together the two try to track down the truth.
The movie up to this point is adequate, and director Eric Valette gives us some frightening images to ponder as the plot grows thicker. In fact, thicker is a huge understatement. Towards the end of the film, there are so many confusing elements and unnecessary and lame twists it simply collapses on itself. The climax is so unbelievable dumb and devoid of tension, you can’t help but laugh. (Especially at the sight of a ghostly baby holding a cell phone) There is absolutely no continuity to the sprits power and absolutely no insight into why or how it is doing what it is doing. A simple explanation, instead of the packed in subplots and “big-reveals” would have made this movie much more tolerable.
Another glaring folly this movie heaps onto the already large stack, is the fact that after about the third death in the group, you would think somebody other then Beth and Det. Andrews would be proactive. Instead they cry and whimper and wait around to die, making sure they say the exact same things they heard themselves say in the voicemail as they perish. I hate to keep saying, “oh and another thing” but this is the type of movie where it is warranted; thusly another thing is that at some point, it would be intelligent to assume someone might suggest tossing away their phones and taking a vacation in a cabin or the like, instead of just hoping it would not ring. The cops are as dumb as a bag of wet doorknobs and take no interest in the sharp spike in grisly teenage deaths amounting throughout the week. You half except J.W. Pepper from Live and Let Die to waltz in, throw down his spittoon and start cracking wise.
One has to wonder, honestly, if this fad of remakes and sequels will ever stop. If at one point they will all jus sit down and ask themselves, what are they are doing to cinema? All I really have left to say about this movie is that although I have already had to bath in its disastrous glow, it was one missed opportunity, one missed mark and one you should miss yourself.
© 2008 Simon Brookfield
