Review: One Missed Call

Released: January 4, 2008
Distributed: Warner Brothers

Bad Filmmaking 101: How to ruin a perfectly good movie

Let me start off by saying that I am sorry for how late this review is.  I have been under the weather and even though I have seen these movies I have not had the strength to drag my ass out of bed to write about them.  I will have one up here in the next day or so for Cloverfield and another bargain bin review because I watched some really crappy movies when I felt sick.  So here it is, better late than never, the first awful horror movie of the new year.

Let me say off the bat that I had low expectations for this movie.  First off, it’s a remake, which is always a bad sign.  Second, Ed Burns is for the most part an unemotional and untalented twit who bores the hell out of me (if he ever does a buddy movie with Freddie Prince Jr. I will slit my wrist so help me God).  And finally I have a real problem with star Shannyn Sossamon.  I don’t dislike her for her acting but because she actually named her child Audio Science Sossamon, proving beyond a shadow of a doubt, she hates her child.  Even with my low expectations, I wasn’t prepared for how big of a turd this movie would be.

It started as I walked into the theatre and got hit directly in the testicles.  I know this is a weird direction to take a review in, but bear with me for a second.  I was walking in the room where this movie was playing and wasn’t paying attention, the person walking out of the theatre to the snack bar opened the second door (which should have been propped open) and the corner hit me directly in my man parts.  Needless to say, my balls were sore the entire movie.  When talking to one of my friends later that day and discussing how awful my morning was the only thing I talked about was how bad this movie was.  I never once mentioned getting hit in the testes.  That means the movie was actually so painfully bad I would actually rather be hit in the groin then sit through this unholy butchering of a Takeshi Miike classic.

Let me break down this movie for you. Shannyn Sossamon plays a grown child abuse victim with a fear of peep holes.  Ed Burns plays a detective whose sister died and apparently believes anything.  Margaret Cho plays a skeptical detective that is adored by the gay community and isn’t funny.  Oh yeah, people get calls from the future where they can hear their own death.

There was no suspense to the movie at all.  They seemed to rush through killing the supporting cast way to fast in order to focus on the impending death of Beth Raymond (Sossamon).  Then there is Det. Jack Andrews (Burns) who believes everything he hears.  You have a woman going on about someone calling from the future and hearing their own death, and you just believe her.  There’s a reason why detectives are always the last ones to believe the supernatural elements of these stories, it makes sense.  The opening scene of the movie was pretty good, and the scene at the abandoned hospital kept me entertained.  But the other hour and ten minutes of the movie were just boring.  I would like to critique the other performances in the movie but every one died before I had a chance to care about them. 

I have to say though, if you watch this movie and feel the same way I did, don’t let it stop you from watching the original.  The Japanese version of this movie is a prime example of why foreign horror movies are so effective.  It focuses on the effect of the whole situation, and the terror it brings, rather than just horror.  There is a difference between terror and horror.  In a horror movie you watch them die, in a movie focusing on terror you feel them die.

That being said One Missed Call is the worst type of bad horror movie.  Because it wasn’t someone trying something new, I can respect that no matter what.  And it wasn’t someone trying to take something crappy and make it better.  This was a movie where they took a strong film, and made it worse to make a quick buck.  According to the box office numbers no one really saw this movie.  But if you were waiting for it to come out on video let me suggest that you save your money and time.

2 out of 10
Movie Review By: Vincent Jerusalem