One Missed Call (2008)

I think I've found it. Ladies and gentleman, this is the worst American remake of a Japanese horror that I have had the misfortune of watching. Not once. Not twice. But three times. With each viewing, my own sanity has gradually subsided, slowly revealing my true "final boss" form. That's right, I've gone super saiyan. Who am I? What am I? Why am I? This is what happens when I witness a film about a group of friends listening to voice mails from the future depicting the last sentence they exclaim before mysteriously dying. With each death, the phone call is passed along until everyone in the entire universe receives their final one missed call. Miike's original is not a classic by any means, an experimental horror film conveying the idea of cellular devices gradually destroying humanity by relinquishing simple face-to-face communication. This remake is identical in plot, yet somehow a million times worse. The only redeemable feature is the ringtone. That is it! Every jump scare or creepy imagery is horrific disposable visual effects that slowly forced me to pop my eyeballs out, throw them into a blender, and attempt to reconstruct the liquified remains. Every actor was atrocious. Every line of dialogue was borderline deadly. Screw waterboarding, want a good method for torture? Just smack this film on. Bam! All the answers you seek will come pouring out in the first ten minutes. Every character was boring, particularly the blandest detective ever who can be persuaded with the flutter of your eyelids. "We should split!", "that's not a good idea.", "but we will get more done?", "ok let's split!". The plot is pointless! Absolutely incomprehensibly stupid. Why these group of friends? Why is the ghost haunting them? Why does everyone have flip phones? Why is everyone standing around waiting to die!? The moral of the story is if you die from an asthma attack, you will become a spiteful spiritual entity that travels through mobile phones for no apparent reason. Quick! Pass me the inhaler now! Don't make me watch this again.

A tired story with poor acting. Definitely one to be missed!

I watched this movie because I had no other "horror" movie to watch; actually, because I had nothing else to watch.Let's get one thing straight - this movie will not scare you at all. It has the predictable cheap "jump scares" but they're cheap and not scary at all.Let's get another thing straight - this is sci-fi so of course the supernatural stuff does not make any sense at all. The story does not make sense. The ending does not make sense.I remember I fast-forwarded a few times here and there, but in general, I was kept interested most of the time to find out what the big "mystery" was. I personally didn't feel offended by the acting, like other reviewers did.My advice: if you're seeking to get scared, this is not for you. But if you're looking for a mystery supernatural movie about people dying and you having to wait until the end to sort-of find out why, then this one is for you. Watch it with an open-mind, fast-forward if you need to, and you might sort-of like this mystery film.6.0/10.0 seems appropriate in my opinion, especially since I already knew not to expect much. I'll now go check out the original Japanese version of it.

Derivative to Say the Least. This Hodgepodge of Better Films can Only be Recommended for Horror Movie Completest.Jump Scares to the Extreme only make the Back Story, which is the Movie's Best Part, feel Cluttered and Cliché Driven. The sometimes Creepy Moments are also rendered as Throwaways because the thing just can't figure out what works and what doesn't.Child Abuse is woven into the Script and makes for some Interesting Commentary and if that Thread was Cultivated Completely and the Silly Stuff, like Exorcising a Cell Phone was Totally Discarded, it could have been a more than Standard J-Horror Remake.It is Refreshing to See Cell-Phones get Stomped, Snapped in Half, Kicked, and Thrown in the Sewer. Hoorah.There remains among the Missteps enough to make it Worth a Watch with Low Expectations and Disregarding Knee-Jerk Reactions to Foreign Remakes and a Tolerance for Bad Directorial Decisions. There is Half a Good Story Contained.