One Missed Call

Miike may be known as a "master of horror", it took him quite a while to jump on the Asian suspense wave. While he loves to experiment with horror elements, he hadn't made a straight-forward ghost flick before he gave it a go with One Missed Call. The result is a solid genre flick, though without the usual Miike touches.

One of Yumi's friends receives a message on her cell phone, sent from her own number, dated three days into the future. When she plays the message, she hears her own death scream. Three days later, she dies, a little after that her friends get the same message. Yumi is freaked out and decides to investigate the matter.

The setup of the film is pretty predictable, and it takes Miike a bit too long to get to the crux of the matter. Once all the pawns are in place, the film gets better. An extended scene in an abandoned hospital shows that Miike has the chops for this type of less-is-more horror, there just isn't enough of it to make One Missed Call a true Miike essential. Still, a great choice if you're looking for fun horror filler.