Really Surprised!

Dreadfully Boring

The movie is made so realistic it has a lot of that WoW feeling at the right moments and never tooo over the top. the suspense is done so well and the emotion is felt. Very well put together with the music and all.

Actress is magnificent and exudes a hypnotic screen presence in this affecting drama.

I was really surprised with this movie , because all over the Asian movie line it is hyped to the top with ringu and Ju-on, which i have not got round to seeing. But nowhere mentioned this scary gem by horror legend takashi miike. The storyline is good and the acting was at its best for a horror movie. The only bad thing would be that i was expecting to jump a bit more than i did. However this film still leaved me pretty restless.I won't be answering my phone to any unknown numbers any time soon. The concept of ghosts getting to you through technology is something very scary, and clearly Asia is extremely good and covering this concept.Now from what i have heard people say just another grudge movie. Now i do dis-agree as ever movie is different in itself. This was directed and acted brilliantly and the effects were visually great. Many cliff hangers which you expect the film to end on but it just throws you back into the world of darkness again and again and again. This is a classic horror epic and i recommend to any horror fan. Ps. subtitles aren't a problem for me, But whatever you do don't go see the crappy remake.

Not the first and certainly not the last in a long, long, (very long) line of Japanese horror 'creep' flicks, "One Missed Call" was not one I anticipated to be much really. The premise is awfully teenybopper: a strange voicemail message on your cell phone tells you when you will die. Somehow I felt like this must have been done before. But not like this guy did it...It takes a lot to creep my out and Takashi Miike managed to do it pretty well in the final twenty minutes of this movie. The setting becomes extremely scary and the jumpouts are not typical; they don't really build up, they just seem to come out of nowhere.My only complaint with this film is that it never really ties itself up into a neat little package in the end; it's a little convoluted as to why certain people are connected to the original death. Without giving anything up, I'll just say that I was a bit perplexed.I have to ask: who thinks it's a smart idea to keep remaking these awesome Asian horror flicks and dumbing them down with Americanized garbage? Are we really that lazy that we can't read subtitles? And if so, why not just watch the dubbed version? I just don't get it! "One Missed Call" is one that should not be missed by horror buffs. I liked it.8 out of 10, kids.

I watched the Japanese horror film, One Missed Call last night, and i thought that it was a excellent film, and far better than the American remake. It is about a teenager Yoko Okazaki who is in a bar with her friends, she receives a voice mail from the future telling the date and time when she will die. The next day, Yumi hears a group of students talking about the story where people are mysteriously receiving phone calls with the exact date and time of their death. a couple of days later at the exact hour, Yoko is attacked by a supernatural force in a train station, while she is talking to her friend Yumi Nakamura. Yumi finds out Kioto's boyfriend Kenji Kawaia also received a call, and she witnesses his death in an lift. When her roommate Natsumi Konishi receives a call, Yoko becomes friends with Hiroshi Yamashita, who tells her that his sister Ritsuko was the first victim of the phone call. They find that the name of Marie Mizunuma and her daughters Mimiko and Nanako have something to do with the strange phone calls. They begin a search to find out what is going on. I thought that this was a very good film and would recommend people to see it. 7/10

If John Carpenter's 1978 film Halloween was a metaphorical and unsubtle morality tale on celibacy, does this make Takashi Miike's 2003 film One Missed Call a metaphorical and unsubtle tale on popularity? If you had sex in Halloween you were sliced and diced; if you own a mobile phone in this ever growing post-modern world of gadgets and modernity as well as being really popular, in One Missed Call you're arguably in even bigger trouble. But then again even I'm not sure if being stalked by Michael Myers is as scary or indeed scarier than being hunted by a supernatural ghost-like being. There is one thing for sure though, One Missed Call takes its idea and its feint ideas on the ever increasing demand for popularity and somewhat makes a hash of it.I suppose there is no surprise that the Japanese would produce a film such as this one. The general feel I think is that the Japanese are consistently producing the best horror films that the world is currently seeing and even when it's not Japan such as 2003's The Eye, it is still that Far Easterly Asia influence that makes them better than American or indeed European films in the genre. But One Missed Call is just one missed opportunity. With its premise revolving around a slice of technology that spawns greater fears (video tape in The Ring/laser eye technology in The Eye), One Missed Call feels a little dated right from the beginning. Usually the film will rely on daft logic from its characters and implausible situations to get across the bulk of its scares.The idea behind the film reads something along the lines of a mysterious caller trying to contact various people. When these people fail to answer their phones they have a missed call and these voice messages are their grizzly fates. It sounds interesting and like a compelling detective idea but the film dumbs down its premise by presenting the women within the film as weak; one-dimensional; squealing; screaming; inferior people who all share the common characterisations of being abused and the victims in general. Compare this to the male characters who have sad back-stories; are brave, strong and toward the end closely resemble a mythical knight in shining armour as the final acts plays out in a hospital. The men in the film are also authority figures with the few incidences of police presence all being of the male variety.But until these gender issues have arrived, the characters (usually the women) are given really embarrassing actions to carry out. Yumi (Shibasaki) is the protagonist of the film and the one who must find out what's going on before she herself comes to harm. In The Ring and The Eye, similar female heroines took on supernatural missions in order to save themselves and future people. Here, Yumi can only squeal, cry and put her hands over her eyes when faced with danger as the false-hero Hiroshi (Tsutsumi) comes to save her. Hiroshi is also given a prior tragedy; his sister succumbed to the missed call curse and he's in on figuring it all out purely out of spite. For him it is a revenge mission and we feel more for him because of this, thus taking away the focus and emphasis from Yumi.The final showdown in hospital makes for some interesting reading. Watch it and ask yourself "Who actually does what?" Yumi can only cry, stare and crawl around when faced with the film's antagonist and yet there is more at stake for her as it's her life on the line – Hiroshi is there purely for payback but it is him with the weapon and it is he who must fight the monster. Even getting to the hospital is an ordeal. Yumi figures out one thing or another and goes there all alone, at night, poking around. I'm all for scares and thrills, that's why we actively watch horror films but when the motivation for the scares come at such a disappointing and dumbed down level, it is then difficult to 'feel' for the people in the film as it was their own stupidity that got them there in the first place.So this really just acts as a set up to get the male saviour of the film to finish the story off. Getting to the final act is equally as silly. When someone's possession phenomenon is revealed earlier on, everyone's first reaction is to bung her on a TV show and have her exorcised live. This could be a statement on how Japan these days make a media circus out of anything but I'm not in touch enough with the culture to know this for sure. Needless to say that by the time the ghost appears, the entire studio has run away and left the female victim by herself – where were the security guards that were so desperate not to let Hiroshi and Yumi into the studio? Why are there no cautionary backups? Why does the girl just stay there and let it 'get' her? Because she's a female and it acts as a 'scary' scene, I suppose.One Missed Call plods along with its meek ideation about how phones and technology and popularity are maybe dangerous, but it never makes any serious stand. The film is a series of ill-motivated, uninteresting scenes that do not scare so much as they frustrate. By the time the showdown with the monster has arrived, you expect Yumi to be fighting for her life with it right in front of her alá The Ring, The Eye or even an American film like The Terminator or Alien, but she doesn't even seem interested. Not a great venture into the Far Easterly horror territory.