Macabre...ish Horror Review: One Missed Call

One Missed Call, 2003/ 1 hr 52 min

Yumi (Kō shibasaki) and Yoko listen to a voicemail with the two of them talking but the number Yoko receives it from is her own number. They shrug it off but 3 days later they get deja vu when they suddenly say the same thing that was in the voicemail, they Yoko screams and is forced through a fence and onto the movie train below.

Other friends realize they’ve had the same thing happen to them, a missed call from their own number and a voicemail or video from themselves. And while some are worried, other’s try to shrug it off. But even when they are careful, some kind of force makes it happen.

Yumi tries alerting authorities but that goes nowhere. Meanwhile she teams up with a police officer, Yamashita (Shinichi Tsutsumi), who lost his sister to this phenomena and has been researching it ever since. He’s got times, dates and deaths ranging from pesticides in someone’s eyes, someone else swallowing thumb tacks etc.

He’s obsessed with finding the truth and is fired, so unrestricted, they try to solve the mystery. The way is paved with victims of abuse.

This Japanese horror film is directed by Takashi Miike. The effects are graphic and disturbing but the movie is mostly unnerving and sad. But it is eerie and expect plenty of jump scares.