One Missed Call [Blu-ray]

It happens to one. Then another. And another. College students discover eerie voicemail messages on their cell phones. Each call comes from the near future. Each call has the chilling voice of the student during his or her last moments alive. And each call comes true. Terror is One Missed Call away in this got-your-number shocker based on the hit Japanese thriller Chakushin ari. Does the viral spree of calls have a single source? Is there something that links the victims? Psych student Beth Raymond (Shannyn Sossamon) and detective Jack Andrews (Ed Burns) scramble for answers. And they’re working fast. Because Beth just discovered an ominous message.
Yet more modern technology falls prey to the influence of eeeeevil spirits in One Missed Call, a horror flick following firmly in the footsteps of The Ring, Pulse, and other remakes of Japanese creepfests. Good-looking young people are receiving voice-mails that prefigure their gruesome deaths; Beth (Shannyn Sossamon, 40 Days and 40 Nights) and Jack (Ed Burns) race against time to find the source of this cell-phone curse, leading them to a dark and treacherous burnt-out hospital. Little is fresh here--One Missed Call apes every other Japanese horror remake, using corpse makeup, blurry images at the corner of the screen or just out of sight, lots of ambient rattles and gasps, spooky-looking children, and the slow, trembling turn towards a ringing phone... which stopped being scary about four or five movies ago. But for fans of this particular subgenre, One Missed Call may evoke the warm, enjoyable familiarity that devotees of 1970s horror feel towards the repetitive output of Hammer Films. Ray Wise (Reaper, Twin Peaks) has a bit of fun as a cynical TV producer; comedian Margaret Cho has such a brief, throwaway part as a skeptical cop that one wonders if the rest of her role is on the cutting room floor; and Meagan Good (Brick, Stomp the Yard) gets prominent billing but is hardly in the movie at all. --Bret Fetzer