One Missed Call
"So it was YOU all along!"
Somebody utters this to somebody else late in "Call," the new remake of the 2003 Takashi Miike "J-horror" film about death and doom and that international epidemic of obsessive-compulsive disorder, the cell phone. Miike's film, based (as this one is) on a Yasushi Akimoto novel, was joltingly creepy and subtly mysterious, as were the original Japanese versions of the J-horror "The Ring" and "The Grudge." But "remake" to Hollywood means "all mysteries must be solved," no matter how supernaturally silly that solution.
The premise here is hair-raising. Somebody dies. And then everybody on her cell phone's stored-numbers list gets a call. One at a time, they hear a ring tone that is not their own, answer the phone and hear their own voices utter the last words they'll say on this Earth (often followed by a scream). They see in the message field the date and exact time of their deaths. Never has "You have one voice message" seemed so spooky.
The new "Call" begins with a feeble "Scream" homage. An actress you'll know or at least recognize takes a call and is killed in a koi pond (little Japanese touches abound). In a string of wakes, funeral visitations and latte-bar rap sessions, her collegiate peers start to piece together what is happening. You hear a ring tone that isn't your own, don't answer it. Lose the phone. Even though that doesn't help.
Ed Burns shows up as a cop trying to piece together the supernatural puzzle, as if there's anything he can do about it other than stomp on a phone. Margaret Cho has the thankless, humorless role of his partner.
But the odd chilling moment or satiric poke at the cell-obsessed culture is always followed by another blast of "exposition," the manic need to "explain" the unexplainable. This is boring in the extreme.
"One Missed Call" is rated PG-13 for intense sequences of violence and terror, frightening images, some sexual material and thematic elements. Running time: 87 minutes.