Review of One Missed Call (2003) by Paula D — 16 Aug 2009

Until Takashi Miike, no filmmaker had dared to tell the tale of those poor teenage cell phone users who receive phone calls from their future selves and then die horrible deaths one minute before the call was placed. By its silence, the movie industry had become complicit in the phone company's total disregard of this major threat to customer safety. But now the problem can no longer be ignored, and hopefully, new regulations will be put into place so that cell phone users will no longer be mutilated or disarticulated by malicious asthmatic ghosts.

"One Missed Call" is such a generic Japanese ghost story (yes, you guessed it, it's the expressionless blue girl with the long hair and the clucking sounds that did it) that it could have been called "Phone RING" or "RING tone". It is well made (though half-an-hour overlong), and the idea of a TV show stepping in was nice, but we've seen it more than a few times already. If Asian horror is to survive in the long run, it might have to innovate a little, maybe by incorporating characters into the plots.

(I actually liked it less than two stars, but I'm deliberately overrating it because (1) I don't have a cell phone and therefore didn't feel concerned; (2) I got somewhat distracted by my cat's antics with her ball; and (3) the reflections on the TV screen made much of the hospital scene too murky to make out what was happening.).