Reviews Film / OneMissedCall

Film One Missed Call: Waste of my time?

I have seen all of the original Chakushin Ari movies and absolutely loved them. And then the American remake came out. Usually films like The Ring or The Grudge, you'd expect this movie to be a big hit. However a movie like this shows why it failed so miserably, from the awful attempts of scaring us with horrible CGI babies and cats being drowned for no reason to unrealistic death scene especially when compared to the original. The acting was okay for me, but that is only a minor okay for this movie. The plot is at first interesting but quickly becomes dull and dragged one. One of the changes that I was actually okay with was the ending difference, where this movie shows that the curse will never really be broken by Beth staring down at Detective "whatshisname"'s phone as it rings and a red candy pops out his mouth.

This movie was on my sliding scale of American J-horror remakes, but I wouldn't exactly call it the "worst remake of 2008". Personally I believe all the other negative review greatly exaggerates the awfulness of the movie, so I'll just say that it's So Bad, It's Good. Although it isn't the strongest attempt at remaking a Japanese classic, however I found myself sane enough to watch it till the end.

4.5/10

Film One Missed Call

Misses badly at scaring the audience. The characters are too flat to care about (when the most interesting person in the movie only appears briefly and posthumously, you know the "live" characters are beyond bland), and while the premise starts off interesting, the screenwriter and/or director loses track of what to do with it, resulting in a very blah ending.

I think calling this the worst movie of 2008 might be a little much, but it's definitely not worth bothering with unless you're really desperately bored already.