I clicked on the second result, a Collider clickbait post featuring a slew of bad flicks with 0% Rotten Tomatoes rating. The #1 Movie on the list had fun-looking screen grab and a deliriously stupid movie poster (see above). So... That's how I ended up on the 2008 film, One Missed Call starring Ed Burns, in one of the most bored performances ever captured on tape...
The tagline for this reads "Several people start receiving voice-mails from their future selves - messages which include the date, time, and some of the details of their deaths" and this is spelled out by a fairly unimportant character less than twenty minutes into the film...
But let's rewind. The first death happens before the opening credits. And the killer in this instance is a koi pond ghost hand that also kills this poor girl's cat for no real reason...
If that doesn't get you excited for the next 80 minutes, I'm not sure what will. Shannyn Sossamon plays Beth, our main girl, a college psych major. We're introduced to her character as she's attempting to make a salad in the middle of a raucous co-ed party. This is a small but telling moment in that it tells us that the world of One Missed Call is not the world we (or anyone on earth) is living in. It's worth noting that this is a remake of a 2003 Japanese film, which in turn was based off a novel released just prior. The general premise has major Final Destination vibes, so it's an easy assumption that it was at least inspired by that franchise which began in 2000.
The WHAT is clearly spelt out: young people are dying, and right after they die they are dialing a seemingly random number in their flip phone's contact book, which triggers a voicemail recording on that person's phone FROM THE FUTURE featuring said future victim's last words/moments on earth...
Rinse. Wash. Repeat. The only real conflict then is The WHY this is all happening, and so Beth and Detective Ed Burns (whose own sister was actually the real victim #1) set off on figuring it all out. In between moments of lazily crafted expo and serviceable to very bad acting, we get lovely flourishes of cheapo 2008 CGI that I found to be completely endearing...
...and by far my favorite one: creepy ghost baby in haunted hospital playing with cellphone...
We're introduced to Ray Wise's character, a shady TV producer of a show called "American Miracles" who catches wind of these spooky cellphone-related deaths and offers to do a 'cellphone exorcism' as part of a new (apparently live?) episode on the mystery occurrences. This is easily the most outwardly stupid thing in the entire film and it also glorious, as the event descends into madness and eventually another murder via ghost strangulation...
You really can't ever become a movie people are gonna take seriously after a scene like that, and you know what? That's fine. This film is fine. It leans as hard into the schlock as possible without winking, and I appreciated that. Unfortunately, there is still plot to make sense of and that is less enjoyable then simply letting things like 'cellphone exorcism' wash over you in a state of WTF numbness.
They eventually track the source of this evil energy back to an abusive single mother who died in a hospital fire alongside one of her two daughters. Our psych major Beth informs us that she suffered from Munchausen syndrome by proxy, a mental illness wherein the caretaker of a child makes up fake symptoms or causes real symptoms to make it look like the child is sick to get attention. Beth herself has a real connection to child abuse having survived it herself as we see in flashbacks featuring another David Lynch collaborater, none other than Mulholland Drive's Laura Herring, who plays her psychotic-as-shit mom...
(I don't know why, but it's very weird to see two Lynchian actors in a movie like this!)
Anyway, the surviving daughter is now in orphanage and has gone mute, but she does have a toy bear that plays the exact same creepy ringtone that's been playing during all our fateful missed calls...
Beth figures out that the abusive mom (whose body was never recovered) must be still in the hospital and, well, I'll just let her explain it...
So Beth makes the genius decision to go to the haunted hospital BY HERSELF and she is attacked by the corpse-monster (who is holding a flip phone, naturally) after some lengthly, creepy hallucinations and some ghost confrontations which led to Ed Burns being briefly knocked unconscious...
But wait a minute! Did that corpse-monster shed a tear? What the hell. Thinking they've cracked the case and dodged the final killing, Ed Burns and Beth part ways. For some reason, Ed has to immediately go to the orphanage to tell the mute five-year-old that they found the burnt corpse-monster remains of her mother (?) but this is just a poorly written excuse to get him to take a closer look at that ringtone-playing teddy bear. And he discovers that it's actually a nanny-cam and there is still a CD (lol) inside with footage on it...
NOT SO FAST! It wasn't the mom abusing the kid, but the kid's big sister (played by none other than a young Ariel Winter (Alex Dunphy on Modern Family). This is the kind of wrench thrown in at the 11th hour that can really ruin a movie, but seeing as how 'cellphone exorcism' was 45 minutes ago, I'll not only allow it, but praise it.
There's one final voice message left on some random phone picked up by a random cop at the hospital and Ed Burns tries to alert Beth but she has her headphones in and doesn't hear his call (our cellphones were still just phones in 2008, don't forget). So he races over to her house and is immediately killed by getting stabbed through the peephole. Then the ghoul (lil Alex Dunphy) turns her sights on Beth, but Beth is saved by Ghost Mom who materializes and chokes out her Ghost Daughter, before the whole movie ends on an extremely ambiguous with Ed Burns' cellphone dialing itself as Beth walks away in a daze...
(Sorry. I realize I never explained what the marbles falling out of the dead peoples' mouths were. They're actually red hard candies and don't worry about it. Don't worry about it at all.)
In the end, this one is definitely a delirious mess, but it's the kind of delirious mess I like for some reason. It's not quite a So Bad It's Good Movie, and it's not quite a Legitimately Good Movie; it splits the difference somewhere around 'cellphone exorcism' and, you know what, that's fine.
CHRONOLOGICALLY
⫷ EPISODE 499 - (YOU ARE HERE) - EPISODE 500B ⫸
⫷ EPISODE 499 - (YOU ARE HERE) - EPISODE 500B ⫸
One Missed Call is a 2008 supernatural horror film directed by Eric Valette and written by Andrew Klavan. An international co-production between the United States, the United Kingdom, Japan and Germany, it is a remake of the 2003 Japanese film of the same name directed by Takashi Miike, which itself was based on the Yasushi Akimoto novel Chakushin Ari. The film stars Shannyn Sossamon, Edward Burns, Ana Claudia Talancón, Ray Wise and Azura Skye. It was released on January 4, 2008.
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