The success of The Ring in 2002 gave Hollywood producers almost unconditional justification to green-light American remakes of Japanese horror films.
(To set the record straight, though, FeardotCom, which was released more than a month before The Ring, while it admittedly borrows many elements from Japanese horror films, was much more frightening and at least nominally original in the fact that it wasn’t overtly a remake. Ironically, The Ring proved to be almost an exact duplicate of FeardotCom but garnered much greater success. In my opinion (which dictates this entire review, so it is a bit of a redundant clause to use; nonetheless …), Feardotcom was the superior film and deserved the attention and success that ultimately went almost exclusively to The Ring.
But I digress. …)
The further success of films like The Grudge continued to support this Hollywood inclination toward remaking Japanese horror films. As noted, this trend has been sometimes successful, but it has also resulted in some disappointing products, like Pulse, The Eye (actually a remake of a Southeastern Asian horror film), and, most recently, One Missed Call.
The Movie
As might be expected, the movie revolves around college student Beth Raymond (Shannyn Sossamon) as she hurries to find the menacing source of a string of mysterious and eerily connected deaths conveniently involving a circle of her friends. As revealed in previews of the movie, each death is preceded by an ominous voicemail dated at some point in the future and containing the audio track from the last few seconds of the next victim’s life. Of course, this chain of deaths ultimately leads to Beth’s position as the next ill-fated target and, naturally, she embarks on a frantic quest to find the lethal force, unravel the mystery surrounding its motives, and stop it before it can kill her.
This story is as unremarkable as it is archetypal, and, unfortunately, the movie delivers neither a sufficiently intriguing, suspenseful, and intricate plot nor an intense, frightening, and thrilling horror film. Despite drawing from the conventions of successful Japanese horror films and even a little from the fatalism and coincidence of the successful Final Destination series, One Missed Call fails to create the sense of anxiety and anticipation expected from a horror film. Ironically, though, the shallow story doesn’t necessarily detract from the movie as a whole, as horror films are not expected to have extraordinarily well-developed characters and often even have somewhat inconsistent and/or convoluted plots.
What does detract from the movie is its lack of suspense. While horror films are generally not held to the highest standards, they are expected to instill a certain level of uncertainty, anxiety, and fear within viewers. The predictable story eliminates some possibility for suspense, but, moreover, the film lacks key horror film conventions traditionally used to enhance viewer anxiety. Most prominently, the movie lacks a primary antagonist. In general, horror films capitalize on the convention of the antagonist to craft an imminently terrifying and ominous villain. Japanese horror films and the American remakes of them construct uniquely novel antagonists from supernaturally eerie girls, and while such an eerie young female antagonist is present in One Missed Call, she only appears on screen in a few scenes. There are some admittedly creepy images and figures used to build anxiety and fear, but the movie lacks a singular manifestation of evil to act as the supremely malicious focal point around which the story’s suspense revolves.
Aside from lacking the distinctive evil force necessary to a horror film’s success, the movie also fails to fully utilize traditional conventions of the horror genre involving cinematography and music. Much like the unremarkably archetypal story, the cinematography is typically dark and shadowy, but, again, the movie lacks the sense that anything really scary could be lurking in those shadows. Falling further from the not-so-stringent conventions of the horror genre, the movie’s score is particularly substandard. Generally, a movie’s music is highly influential in setting the desired mood(s) and evoking the appropriate emotion(s), and this is especially true for horror films. Despite its predictable plot, its lack of a distinctive manifestation of evil, and its unexceptional cinematography, the movie could have still managed to be a moderately scary (if unoriginal) horror film if it had employed appropriately intense and chilling music. However, as with too many other aspects of the movie, One Missed Call simply fails to fulfill the relatively modest requirements of the horror genre.
The acting is similarly unremarkable, although, to be fair, the two primary characters are really the only ones that receive enough screen time to even have a chance to stand out. Members of the supporting cast are featured only long enough to make their imminent deaths somewhat meaningful. Edward Burns’ (billed as Ed Burns in the credits) character of Detective Jack Andrews is thoroughly archetypal, providing him little material with which to work. And while Sossamon delivers a respectable performance as the lead, again, the lack of character development and the constraints of the genre don’t really allow her to reveal much of her acting ability.
Special Features
As might be expected from such a lackluster movie, there are no special features.
Presentation
Fittingly, the DVD setup is as unremarkable as the movie itself. There is no moving video on any of the menus and there are no transitions among menus. Moreover, there is only audio on the main menu, and, like the movie’s score, it fails to instill any fear in the audience.
I will, however, praise the movie for including some footage from the original Japanese film (primarily during the exorcism scene). It’s not readily apparent that the footage is from the original, but its inclusion is a nice touch on the part of the director and/or producers.
Overall
Given the somewhat successful trend of remaking Japanese horror films, it’s understandable that Warner Bros. thought One Missed Call might be another The Ring or The Grudge. And while the movie’s predictable plot and ordinary cinematography are acceptable within the confines of the horror genre, it fails to craft a distinctive and supremely scary villain and doesn’t even maximize the score’s potential to enhance the impact of the action.
Ultimately, all the movie’s shortcomings would be tolerable if the final product was a moderately scary film. Unfortunately, the fear-factor of One Missed Call is as unremarkable as the movie’s other components. Not only did the movie fail to create any noticeable level fear or anxiety in me (a twenty-one-year-old male), but even my thirteen-year-old sister observed that while she found it to be relatively entertaining, she did not think the movie was very scary. Honestly, I think the scariest part of the film is that the ending leaves open the possibility for a sequel.