One Missed Call (2003) - Asian Horror Movie Review
Welcome to Sensei Sensibility! You are the hungry mind, yearning to devour Asian horror themed cinema; I am the (questionably) Sensei, more than happy to satiate your cinematic appetite.
I have a question for you. One Missed Call. Originally the novel Chakushin Ari by Yasushi Akimoto, later adapted for film in 2003 by enfant terrible Takashi Miike. (Audition, Ichi the Killer - to name but a few.)
IS IT ACTUALLY ANY GOOD?
What do you think? Let us discuss further, dear reader…
One Missed Call is one of those movies that feels like it should be excellent. It’s a 2004 J-Horror centred around an exceedingly eerie urban legend, filmed by a renowned director - who at the time was still in his ghoulish prime.
It ticks all the boxes. It should, in theory, be the number one J-Horror of all time. So what went wrong?
Let me pause there, and rewind.
One Missed Call focuses on the beautiful, young Yumi Nakamura. (Played by none other than Ko Shibasaki who also portrayed the deadly gorgeous Mitsuko Souma in Battle Royale.) Everything seems to be going well for Yumi with one exception - lots of her friends have recently started violently dying under identical mysterious circumstances.
The mysterious circumstances are:
Each friend has received a voicemail on their phone (yes, those adorable Japanese noughties flip-phones with an abundance of kawaii phone charms) from two days into the future from their own phone number. Upon listening to the voicemail they then hear their own final moments alive. Two days later at the exact time the voicemail was “sent”, they die… spectacularly.
Once dead, a ghostly entity, as yet unknown to the viewer, then sends a new voicemail to a randomly selected number in the deceased’s phone. Once the ghost has called the next victim, the chain of death continues.
Basically, it’s a lot like a lottery you do not want to win.
The first hour of One Missed Call focuses on Yumi’s race against time trying to save her best friend, Natsumi, from succumbing to her supernatural telecommunicative fate. Yumi attempts this with the help of a strange, handsome man with a chip on his shoulder and a troubled past. Together they try, and fail to break Natsumi’s curse.
Once dead, who does Natsumi’s phone ring with the malevolent message? None other than Yumi herself. Now Yumi really has to get her shit together with Mystery Man to root out the root cause of the evil and solve the riddle of the cursed phone calls. Can she save herself in time and stop further deaths from occurring?
The basic premise there sounds perfectly acceptable as a decent horror, doesn’t it?
On top of that you’ve got gruesome deaths, spooky supernatural goings on, an abundance of weird, long black haired ghost-girls, giggling schoolgirls on corners chattering about the Urban Legend stirring deaths, creepy kids with even creepier teddy bears, J-Horror jump scares - all culminating with a high-stakes chase for truth and survival, with multiple grisly plot twists.
Plus, the curse itself is insidiously creepy. Unlike the curses in Ju-On or Ringu where there’s a certain element of choice over whether or not you enter the Grudge House or choose to watch Sadako’s Tape, the Chosen in One Missed Call have zero control over whether or not they’re next. As is evidenced in the film, deleting your phone number, cancelling your cell contract and even physically destroying your phone is no guarantee of safety.
You are truly helpless.
SO WHY DOES ONE MISSED CALL MAKE ME WANT TO HANG UP!?
Despite being a despair laden film saturated with creeping menace, it is, in essence, a film of two halves. The plot for the first hour plods on at a dreary, ponderous pace, only to suddenly jerk into action in the second hour with bullet train speed.
The film favours a dull palette and dim lighting, most likely intended to be ominous, but just highlights the lethargic first half. Even in scenes of heightened emotion, the actors lack energy and perform listlessly. The characters also appear washed out, dressed only in drab, shapeless greys and muted colours.
The only real visual relief for the viewer are the vivid cherry blossom trees scattered in the background of outdoors scenes. I couldn’t decide whether they were a deliberate background choice to highlight the isolated, insular world of colourless horror the characters were now trapped in, or just trees.
The second half is a violent roller-coaster set in a terrifying and red-lit abandoned hospital, heavily featuring flashes of Miike’s typical love of gruesome extremity.
One Missed Call not so much explores but lightly touches on a myriad of disturbing themes such as loneliness, child abuse and mental illness. It also provides a half hearted social commentary on technology-based social isolation and the ever growing threat to society’s privacy through the rise of reality T.V. How we are no longer people, but commodities to be exploited to the highest bidder, no taboo too sacred for ratings. Even a person’s death.
This message is felt most prominently during doomed Natsumi’s unwilling live-on-air exorcism, her plight displayed on gargantuan televisions screens above the Shibuya Scramble, completely ignored by passers by. With Natsumi’s plaintive “I’m completely on my own”, it’s hard not to feel sorry for her.
Interesting in theory as all this may be, by 2003, to quote George’s Harrison’s The Simpson’s cameo “It’s been done.” Ad, Nauseum. One Missed Call lifts both its themes and scares heavily from Ju-On, Ringu, Dark Water and Pulse. Films that personally, execute both with greater aplomb. (Not to mention the range of Korean, Chinese and Thai horrors that had been adding solidly to the annals of cinematic terror in the previous years.)
While there’s no harm in deploying a heart-warmingly familiar paranormal plot or littering your movie with iconic J-Horror tropes. As I said in my recent review of Incantation https://sensei-sensibility.blogspot.com/2022/09/incantation-2022-asian-horror-movie.html, those scares are classics for a reason and part of the fun of Asian horror. However, One Missed Call literally contributes nothing new to the genre. It doesn’t say anything that hasn’t been said before.
Despite 2003 - 2004 being the peak of J-Horror, One Missed Call feels more like a token cash-in on the tailend of a trend than a genuine ground-breaking piece of trailblazing cinema. I’m not saying it has to be a genuine ground-breaking piece of trailblazing cinema, but I know Miike can handle supernatural horror just as well as blood ‘n’ guts. His short for the 2002 Asian fright anthology Three was the best of the series and had more atmosphere and lingering dread than One Missed Call ever will.
One Missed Call, all the right pieces are there, just instead of making sure they all fit to look like the picture on the box, they’re jiggled about on the table until you get the basic gist, grow bored and wander off to see what’s on T.V. Maybe phone a friend.
You don’t have to just take my word for it, for the kick-arse second hour alone go give it a watch. Streaming now on Shudder, this will count as another one to tick off your “To Watch” list. Maybe even give the sequel and "final" instalment in the trilogy a go. Just make sure you’ve got some nice candy to suck on while you watch. Nice, red, round candy…
Let's keep our spooky debate going on:
Comments
Post a Comment