How hard is it to write a supernatural horror movie in Hollywood these days? Not very, if
One Missed Call is any indication. All you need is a young hero or heroine who discovers some kind of cursed device is killing off all of their friends. The device may be anything, just as long as it's something we use everyday. After a group of the hero's faceless and underdeveloped friends die (The depiction of said deaths will depend on whether your film is PG-13 or R.), the hero must then team up with a second hero, and try to discover what's going on. After going through old files and visiting creepy old buildings that hold secrets of the past, the lead characters must discover that the cursed object is tied into some tragic past event, usually revolving around a spooky little girl. A little boy can also work, but girls are apparently creepier for some reason. As the clock ticks down to the hero's own death, they must race to right the wrongs of the past. After the past has seemingly been corrected, the characters breathe a sigh of relief, only to discover that they were wrong, and that someone or something else is responsible for the evil at hand.
It is a formula that has been employed by numerous films, many originating in Japan or some other Asian country.
One Missed Call follows this formula to the letter, right down to the originating in Japan part. The only problem is that it seems to know we've seen it all before. The actors sleepwalk through their dialogue, and many times the hero of the story - a college student named Beth Raymond (Shannyn Sossamon), forgets to even react to the deaths of her friends. You see, all of Beth's friends are being killed off by a cursed cell phone voice mail message. It appears on your phone, and when you play it back, you hear the exact moment of your death. The friends are haunted by spooky visions of ghouls and decaying people walking around in broad daylight, until the character suddenly meets an untimely end in some sort of "accident" that makes me think the evil ghost in this movie took lessons from the ghastly spirit in the
Final Destination films, as its method of killing people is somewhat similar. The
Final Destination villain is much more flashier and complex in its killings, but you have to remember, the ghost in this movie is working under a much more restricted PG-13 rating, so you can't really blame it if its kills are not as bloody or grand.
Now, let me ask you something here. If you knew that people were dying because of a mysterious voice message that appears on your cell phone, wouldn't you just try not listening to the voice message in the first place? This never dawns on Beth or her friends. They try smashing their cell phones to pieces, but this doesn't seem to halt the killer spirit's advances. I don't know if not listening to the message would save your life or not, but I figure if all of my friends were being killed after listening to it, I'd be willing to give it a shot. The movie continues down the expected path, and introduces our second hero, a police detective named Jack Andrews (Edward Burns). He's the only person who believes Beth's story about the cursed voice mail message, because his sister was a victim of it, too. They join forces to discover the truth behind the curse, and the clues fall right into place, leading them to a hospital that burned down a while ago. Everything that we saw happen in films like
The Ring,
The Grudge,
Pulse, and the like happens, and not even the characters don't seem to be all that surprised. They go through the expected motions, and so does the movie itself.
When I say
One Missed Call follows a rigid path, I am dead serious. There's not one single instant we haven't seen in similar-themed movies. I have not seen the Japanese movie that inspired this remake, so I don't know if the original was as uninspired as this. I will give the original the benefit of the doubt that it had a lot more life and energy than this. The characters all seem to be walking a pre-determined path, and what's worse, they seem to know it. There's nothing worse than when the characters seem to be smarter than the movie they're in, but they're forced to act like idiots, because it's expected of them to do so. The movie doesn't even do a good job of explaining itself from time to time. I'm trying hard not to go into spoilers here, but should you see this movie (not that I'm recommending you do), ask yourself why the corpse they discover in the tunnels underneath the burnt hospital was there in the first place? Also ask yourself how many reality TV shows are filmed live? And wouldn't having someone die on your show live on national television kind of cause more attention than it seems to in this movie? My personal favorite moment of the movie actually comes early on, when the film's first victim meets an untimely end. The ghost then decides to not only kill her, but comes back for the victim's pet cat moments later. The movie doesn't even bother to ask the obvious question if the cat got an eerie voice message too.
One Missed Call is the very definition of an early January release, a time of the year when the studios usually unload their stinkers that they don't know what to do with. The fact that it's the only new movie opening this weekend in wide release means that it will most likely find an audience with kids and teens looking for a cheap thrill. It saddens me that teens will waste money on this, when the much better and smarter teen-targeted film,
Juno, is probably playing in the cinema right next door. If you're bored this weekend, and actually consider this movie, please don't. This movie does not alleviate boredom, it only causes it.
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How hard is it to write a supernatural horror movie in Hollywood these days? Not very, if One Missed Call is any indication. All you need is a young hero or heroine who discovers some kind of cursed device is killing off all of their friends. The device may be anything, just as long as it's something we use everyday. After a group of the hero's faceless and underdeveloped friends die (The depiction of said deaths will depend on whether your film is PG-13 or R.), the hero must then team up with a second hero, and try to discover what's going on. After going through old files and visiting creepy old buildings that hold secrets of the past, the lead characters must discover that the cursed object is tied into some tragic past event, usually revolving around a spooky little girl. A little boy can also work, but girls are apparently creepier for some reason. As the clock ticks down to the hero's own death, they must race to right the wrongs of the past. After the past has seemingly been corrected, the characters breathe a sigh of relief, only to discover that they were wrong, and that someone or something else is responsible for the evil at hand.
It is a formula that has been employed by numerous films, many originating in Japan or some other Asian country. One Missed Call follows this formula to the letter, right down to the originating in Japan part. The only problem is that it seems to know we've seen it all before. The actors sleepwalk through their dialogue, and many times the hero of the story - a college student named Beth Raymond (Shannyn Sossamon), forgets to even react to the deaths of her friends. You see, all of Beth's friends are being killed off by a cursed cell phone voice mail message. It appears on your phone, and when you play it back, you hear the exact moment of your death. The friends are haunted by spooky visions of ghouls and decaying people walking around in broad daylight, until the character suddenly meets an untimely end in some sort of "accident" that makes me think the evil ghost in this movie took lessons from the ghastly spirit in the Final Destination films, as its method of killing people is somewhat similar. The Final Destination villain is much more flashier and complex in its killings, but you have to remember, the ghost in this movie is working under a much more restricted PG-13 rating, so you can't really blame it if its kills are not as bloody or grand.
Now, let me ask you something here. If you knew that people were dying because of a mysterious voice message that appears on your cell phone, wouldn't you just try not listening to the voice message in the first place? This never dawns on Beth or her friends. They try smashing their cell phones to pieces, but this doesn't seem to halt the killer spirit's advances. I don't know if not listening to the message would save your life or not, but I figure if all of my friends were being killed after listening to it, I'd be willing to give it a shot. The movie continues down the expected path, and introduces our second hero, a police detective named Jack Andrews (Edward Burns). He's the only person who believes Beth's story about the cursed voice mail message, because his sister was a victim of it, too. They join forces to discover the truth behind the curse, and the clues fall right into place, leading them to a hospital that burned down a while ago. Everything that we saw happen in films like The Ring, The Grudge, Pulse, and the like happens, and not even the characters don't seem to be all that surprised. They go through the expected motions, and so does the movie itself.
When I say One Missed Call follows a rigid path, I am dead serious. There's not one single instant we haven't seen in similar-themed movies. I have not seen the Japanese movie that inspired this remake, so I don't know if the original was as uninspired as this. I will give the original the benefit of the doubt that it had a lot more life and energy than this. The characters all seem to be walking a pre-determined path, and what's worse, they seem to know it. There's nothing worse than when the characters seem to be smarter than the movie they're in, but they're forced to act like idiots, because it's expected of them to do so. The movie doesn't even do a good job of explaining itself from time to time. I'm trying hard not to go into spoilers here, but should you see this movie (not that I'm recommending you do), ask yourself why the corpse they discover in the tunnels underneath the burnt hospital was there in the first place? Also ask yourself how many reality TV shows are filmed live? And wouldn't having someone die on your show live on national television kind of cause more attention than it seems to in this movie? My personal favorite moment of the movie actually comes early on, when the film's first victim meets an untimely end. The ghost then decides to not only kill her, but comes back for the victim's pet cat moments later. The movie doesn't even bother to ask the obvious question if the cat got an eerie voice message too.
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