ONE MISSED CALL

Director: Takashi Miike

Stars: Kou Shibasaki, Shin'ichi Tsutsumi, Kazue Fukiishi, Anna Nagata

Year: 2003

Rating: R

You can read the review for the 2008 American remake of this J-horror (Japanese horror) film in the archives of this very blog, here; I gave that disaster of a film one star, and in fact thought the experience of watching it so bad, I just knew the original Japanese version would have to be better. Happily, it even exceeded my most humble of expectations.

The plot is the same here - just told so much better, and with a heck of a lot more suspense and tension. Kou Shibasaki plays Yumi, a popular and pretty student about to be thrown into some very weird circumstances ... when her close friend Yoko (Anna Nagata), one night when the two girls are together, receives a call on her cell phone that comes with a strange ringtone she doesn't recognize. Checking the called ID after missing the call, Yoko sees the caller is ... herself. Not only that, but the time and date of the call are a day-and-a-half away. Confused, Yoko checks the voicemail left on her missed call - and the two girls here not only Yoko's voice saying "Oh, it's raining" - but this innocent sentence is soon followed by Yoko's screaming, and then the message cuts off.

The girls are (understandably) freaked out by the message, but soon blow it off as some kind of trick played on Yoko by one of their friends. That is, until 11:04pm the next evening - the exact time and date displayed on the missed call on Yoko's phone - when Yoko is walking home and talking to Yumi on her phone, notices the rain just starting to come down ... and seconds after saying "Oh, it's raining" to Yumi, is killed when she's thrown off a bridge, screaming, onto a moving train.

Yoko's death is declared a suicide, but Yumi knows better. And when the guy Yoko liked - who was in Yoko's address book on her cell - gets a similar missed call, then dies right in front of Yumi's eyes, the pattern of the eerie ringtone that signals you calling yourself from the future, foretelling your own death, begins. It doesn't take long before Yumi finds herself on the receiving end of such a call, and finds herself teaming up with a mysterious man named Yamashita (Shin'ichi Tsutsumi) - whose sister is somehow involved in all of this - with only fourteen hours to find out what's going on ... and stop her own death.

Seemingly borrowing a bit from Ringu, or even Ju-on: The Grudge, in places, One Missed Call still manages to maintain a freshness and suspense that keeps the film well-paced throughout. Like most J-horror, the film relies much more on creating an effective and creepy mood through the building up of tension and dread than outright gore, and here it works very well. There is also, in J-horror style, a hint of sadness to the ghostly tale, once you know what's going on, the story told through symbolism as well as a direct narrative style. While not outright "scary" in the way most Westerners would view horror films, there is a downright creepiness here that will get a bit under your skin, with a few jolts to make you jump in your seat along the way. Even the ending, with its nice twist, is something you don't see coming.

MUCH better than its remake (but isn't that usually the way?), the original Japanese version of One Missed Call (which has two sequels I'd now like to see) is pretty much a must-see if you like J-horror - but remains a suspenseful, chilling ride worth taking even if you don't. ***1/2 - Reel Cool-Reel Awesome