Review of One Missed Call (2003) by Ala V — 05 Jul 2008

Miike going mainstream again!

A very visually-pleasing traditional J-Horror flick, with Miike's signature criticism of the state of the family and domestic decaying, sans delving philosophically or psychologically of course.

What makes most of the Japanese horror film industry appealing is its capability of delivering suspense and actually building a compelling atmosphere while not relying much on seat-jumpers and Hollywood scares, as well as keeping up with non-linear timeline, fragmentation, and other experimental techniques. Such characteristic, sadly, have been gradually abandoned and tolerated with as the exposure on the US market growing more and more.

Acting was campy, which is a very strange yet amusing aspect in almost all of Miike's corpus (except for Oudisho,, perhaps, with its pleasing cast and the legendary Ishibashi Ryo.) What speaks in Miike's work is in fact Miike Takashi himself and his visionary talent. Such genius could be seen from the fanatic extravaganza media frenzy in Natsumi (Fukiishi Kazue)'s arc, notably the live exorcism scene.

Rich cinematography and decent sounds. Clever deployment of the ringtone clé worked in favour of progressing and building up without being overly redundant and jejune.