The Phones of One Missed Call

One Missed Call is an awkward movie. Released in 2003, it came on the tail of the Japanese horror wave that gave us 1998's Ring and 2002's Ju-On: The Grudge - by then, the market had been saturated. 2001's Pulse added a weirder, more tech-y option, 2002's Dark Water gave us a wet one, and 2002's The Eye gave us a very good Chinese addition to the canon of wider Asian horror. But we needed more. We needed an evil phone movie.

After all, phones were the new big thing. These snazzy little objects were more high-tech than ever. You could play games on them - like Paris Hilton's Diamond Quest.

Hell yes. Now that's gaming.

 

Incidentally, if you're interested in exploring some of this era of mobile gaming, you can check out Kahvi break for a really nice collection of Java games, and J2ME Loader if you want to play some of them on Android.

One Missed Call is about this glorious era of phones. But after the film's initial exposition, after the audience fully understands that yes, a vengeful ghost is doing kills by meticulously going down its victims' contacts lists, we sort of abandon the phones.

You'd expect this movie to be phone heavy, but it's not, not really. It devolves into a run-of-the-mill sleuthing session, and the mystery itself leaves a lot to be desired. Who is the nasty ghost in question? A child who is evil. Why is she killing through the phone? I don't know.

It's that damn Cardcaptor Sakura. It's a bad influence.

The film loses itself to dullness. When it's doing phone stuff, it's at its most interesting. When it's not doing phone stuff, I'm bored. I particularly like the whole conceit of receiving a phone call which divines a future event. It makes it a less straightforward ghost story and more of a divine, mystical event that bends time and space. And that element is present in some form in many of the best Asian horror stories. A world-breaking mysticism that is terrifying precisely because there can be no answer other than that the world is not what it seems. Mmmm... delicious.

My other favourite element of this movie is that when its characters are receiving a haunted phone call, they hear a unique, spooky ringtone. That's honestly very funny and good. You'll know when you get a ghost type phone call. The scary chimes will play.

Overall, this movie is a letdown, but I still love this aesthetic world, and all these lovely phones. There are two sequels to this film - I might have to watch them.

One haunted flip-phone out of five. 

★☆☆☆☆