Plot: What’s it about?
I have to admit that I’m a bit of a sucker for a horror movie. Now the genre will likely never die (pardon the pun), but there are certain aspects that must be present to make a horror movie truly good (read: scary). “One Missed Call” contains none of those and as such is 87 minutes of my life that I now want back. I usually comment on the cast, the director or some other pertinent aspect of a movie I review as it provides a bridge into what the movie is about and such. About five minutes into the film, I felt that I was watching a bad re-make of “The Ring”. And that’s essentially what the movie is, a re-make of a much better and much scarier film and one that still gives me chills when I think of certain scenes. For some added measure, this movie also reminded me of the “Final Destination” series of movies, not as scary as “The Ring” but certainly much more entertaining than this film. Let’s start out with the cast. The only two names that really jumped out at me were Ed Burns (evidently he’s not going by Edward any longer) and Margaret Cho, who’s relegated to a stock role. A high-profile cast isn’t a necessity, but this movie needed something to get it to work.
For those still interested, I’ll give a rundown as what to expect. We meet several college-age kids, but don’t get too attached as they all (gasp) start to die! How? It seems that they receive a phone call with a voice message from their future selves and this contains the time and place they are to die. There’s no rhyme or reason why they die and it’s later revealed that everything stems from the sister of Jack Andrews (Ed Burns). His sister had a group of friends who are all now starting to die and they must try and outwit their fate. We eventually whittle down to Beth (Shannyn Sossamon) as she and Jack have finally figured out what (or who) is responsible for the mysterious happenings. Naturally I won’t give away what happens, but let’s just say you won’t need to think too long and hard about it to figure out the ending. “One Missed Call” looks and feels like a movie made for cable. In fact, if not for the star power of Burns, that’s probably where it should have ended up. For a better time, go see “The Ring” and not this paltry knockoff.
Video: How does it look?
“One Missed Call” really doesn’t look that great and that’s not because the movie jaded me. It has all the right elements going for it, a short movie, zero supplements and only one uncompressed track. The bottom line, this 1.85:1 VC-1 HD transfer should look a lot better than it does. I noticed some artifacting in several scenes and a general softness that seemed to plague most of the movie. Fleshtones are very lifelike and natural, and I didn’t notice any edge enhancement in the least. For a brand new movie from a major studio, I was pretty disappointed with the video here.
Audio: How does it sound?
We get a fairly decent Dolby TrueHD soundtrack here and it really only shines in a few scenes. One of them is the opening scene in which a fire burns a house down and there are few things that really sound more natural than fire. Dialogue is strong and consistent throughout and one thing I will say is that the ring on the cell phones (that signifies their impending death) does tend to stay with you. Unfortunately the TrueHD stops short and really sounds more like a basic surround mix, but even the most robust soundtrack in the world wouldn’t help what’s going on-screen.
Supplements: What are the extras?
No supplements are included here, not even a trailer. I think that’s a good thing though it might have been a good incentive to include the Japanese movie this movie is based off of: “Chakushin Ari.”
