One Missed Call - Review

Director: Eric Valetta
Screenplay: Andrew Klavan
Starring: Ed Burns/Shannyn Sossamon
Runtime: 1 hr 26 minutes

There's no way this movie gets good grades from the critics and movie buffs. It's derivative and hokey.

Still, I think it's a decent movie for the PG set. I think that's what the producers were going for, because the gore is kept to a minimum, and the spooky parts are fairly tame. Movies like this always suffer from comparisons: the hard-core crowd will compare it to Japanese masterpieces, and never give a thought to the fact that each popcorn movie is not always meant for their sophisticated intellect.

There's nothing wrong with a semi-spooky, cheesy movie. One thing that occurred to me while watching the film is that I haven't seen a true pre-teen horror movie in a while. The kind of movie that used to appear on Shock Theater when I was kid, when my friends and I would stay up really late (10:30pm) to see it on TV.

So maybe it's a good thing to have a derivative J-horror picture for the younger crowd. When I was growing up, there were wall-to-wall horror movies. Every Friday and Saturday night, you could relish the fact that your parents were out with their friends, and you could watch of a few cheesy horror movies. Years later, you can't see why you were afraid of them, but back in the day it was great fun scaring the hell out of your brother when all the lights were off.

The plot of the movie is just like every other J-horror flick. Someone is dead, so they've decided to haunt people in the most inefficient way possible. This time out, it's phone calls. Not like The Ring's phone calls; in that movie, the ghost gave you a week to live before doing you in. In One Missed Call, the ghost is impatient and only gives you 48 hours.

So that's the movie. Your phone rings in an abnormally creepy way. You look at the screen and see "one missed call," and when you answer the phone, ooops, that's your own voice! And that's the sound of you dying. So now you know what your last words on Earth will be. 48 hours later, curtains.

The acting by the leads isn't bad, though the acting by a couple of the supporting characters is pretty horrendous. For some reason, Ed Burns turns up in this movie. Maybe he took a break from directing and wanted to play something fun and easy. He does a good job with it. He plays a detective, and like all detectives, his name is Jack.

Shannyn Sossamon is very good playing the (as always) feminine hero on a quest to find the truth before it kills her. Naturally, she's beautiful, but it helps that she has acting chops. I thought she'd rise to be a star after her role in A Knight's Tale opposite Heath Ledger, but that was over six years ago. If she's doing B-horror now, it's because of some duds in the last few years. It's too bad, because she's a good actor.

All in all, a movie for the kids, but not for the hard-core horror crowd.

Photos: Yahoo Movies