Like many lousy horror films, the premise to "One Missed Call" isn't half bad, though perhaps a bit recycled. In this one, Leann Cole (Azura Skye) receives a strange voice-mail message: Her own voice, panicked, terrified, and screaming. Two days later, she dies in a freak accident, uttering the same words and screams that she heard on her cell phone.
One by one, the members of Leann's circle of friends receive phone messages of themselves moments before death only to end up dying exactly as indicated. Beth Raymond (Shannyn Sossamon) witnesses all this but can't explain it. And when her own phone rings, Beth hears her coming demise and has barely a day to discover who is placing the calls and why.
Whether you liked "The Ring" or not, there was a certain novelty to it at the time. Then came "The Grudge", "Dark Water", "The Skeleton Key", and a dozen others. With "One Missed Call", Hollywood isn't just scraping the bottom of the barrel, they're turning the barrel over and seeing if any residue is clinging to the underside.
Andrew Klavan wrote the screenplay, based on a Japanese novel and script. I can't speak for the quality of his source material, but Klavan does nothing to elevate the story to any level of class. If you thought the original Halloween was ridiculous for having Jamie Lee Curtis run upstairs(!) and hide in a closet(!) to escape her supernatural stalker, then Beth's foray into a hospital's air ducts will have you groaning in sheer disdain.
The acting is decidedly poor. But it's not the kind of lousy acting that speaks ill of the performers. Instead, it feels like director Eric Valette actually requested the delivery we see on-screen. It may have something to do with the fact that Valette is a native Frenchman, that his last film job was six years before, and that "One Missed Call" is his American debut. He's reaching across cultural and linguistic borders for the first time, and it shows.
But there's a bigger problem running through the entire film.
Every film creates its own universe. Some are worlds just like ours, some are complete fantasies. But all of them must create rules of operation, including how the spiritual elements function. Even if the audience isn't aware of the rules, the writer and director must have them in mind.
"One Missed Call" creates rules, and then inexplicably ignores them at random. For example, as the victims each get closer to death, they begin seeing strange apparitions. These apparitions are the same every time, and are actually clues to what is going on. But when one character dies in a Catholic church, in addition to the apparitions she also sees the icons of Mary and the Apostles begin distorting into gruesome figures. It may be a cool visual effect, but it breaks the rules and has nothing to do with anything before or after.
That same death illustrates another violation. All the previous deaths have been made to look like freak accidents, but the girl in the church is visibly strangled by a ghostly figure.
I would suggest the rule-breaking is because the director cared more about cool shots, cheap scares, and phony tension. Our evil spirit moves quickly behind frightened characters, heard only because the sound crew puts in an overused "whhht!" to get us to jump. But the spirit proves that it does not need to materialize at all in order to stalk and kill, so why bother whhht-ing around the place? And if time and space are no obstacle, why travel through the cell phone at all? Why bother warning people they are about to die? And why do all of Beth's friends get two days' warning when Beth only gets one? Why drag the apparitions into it? Why list one of the stars as Ed Burns in the opening credits, and Edward Burns in the end credits? If they can't even get the credits congruent; what hope do we have of anything in between being any good? Instead of playing out the basic premise with care and consistency, Valette and Klavan mash various creepy ideas into the story until what's left horrifies us only because of its sheer stupidity.
One by one, the members of Leann's circle of friends receive phone messages of themselves moments before death only to end up dying exactly as indicated. Beth Raymond (Shannyn Sossamon) witnesses all this but can't explain it. And when her own phone rings, Beth hears her coming demise and has barely a day to discover who is placing the calls and why.
Whether you liked "The Ring" or not, there was a certain novelty to it at the time. Then came "The Grudge", "Dark Water", "The Skeleton Key", and a dozen others. With "One Missed Call", Hollywood isn't just scraping the bottom of the barrel, they're turning the barrel over and seeing if any residue is clinging to the underside.
Andrew Klavan wrote the screenplay, based on a Japanese novel and script. I can't speak for the quality of his source material, but Klavan does nothing to elevate the story to any level of class. If you thought the original Halloween was ridiculous for having Jamie Lee Curtis run upstairs(!) and hide in a closet(!) to escape her supernatural stalker, then Beth's foray into a hospital's air ducts will have you groaning in sheer disdain.
The acting is decidedly poor. But it's not the kind of lousy acting that speaks ill of the performers. Instead, it feels like director Eric Valette actually requested the delivery we see on-screen. It may have something to do with the fact that Valette is a native Frenchman, that his last film job was six years before, and that "One Missed Call" is his American debut. He's reaching across cultural and linguistic borders for the first time, and it shows.
But there's a bigger problem running through the entire film.
Every film creates its own universe. Some are worlds just like ours, some are complete fantasies. But all of them must create rules of operation, including how the spiritual elements function. Even if the audience isn't aware of the rules, the writer and director must have them in mind.
"One Missed Call" creates rules, and then inexplicably ignores them at random. For example, as the victims each get closer to death, they begin seeing strange apparitions. These apparitions are the same every time, and are actually clues to what is going on. But when one character dies in a Catholic church, in addition to the apparitions she also sees the icons of Mary and the Apostles begin distorting into gruesome figures. It may be a cool visual effect, but it breaks the rules and has nothing to do with anything before or after.
That same death illustrates another violation. All the previous deaths have been made to look like freak accidents, but the girl in the church is visibly strangled by a ghostly figure.
I would suggest the rule-breaking is because the director cared more about cool shots, cheap scares, and phony tension. Our evil spirit moves quickly behind frightened characters, heard only because the sound crew puts in an overused "whhht!" to get us to jump. But the spirit proves that it does not need to materialize at all in order to stalk and kill, so why bother whhht-ing around the place? And if time and space are no obstacle, why travel through the cell phone at all? Why bother warning people they are about to die? And why do all of Beth's friends get two days' warning when Beth only gets one? Why drag the apparitions into it? Why list one of the stars as Ed Burns in the opening credits, and Edward Burns in the end credits? If they can't even get the credits congruent; what hope do we have of anything in between being any good? Instead of playing out the basic premise with care and consistency, Valette and Klavan mash various creepy ideas into the story until what's left horrifies us only because of its sheer stupidity.