One Missed Call

I think Satan needs to really get a grip on which ghosts he lets out of hell. We need some sort of rule specifying that unless you have a specific reason or target for which you are returning to haunt the world of the living, then you don’t get to be a ghost and you just go to hell with all the other assholes. I’m saying this because I just watched this movie called One Missed Call and this ghost was one proper asshole without a cause. You know how in the first Nightmare on Elm Street Freddy went after the kids of the people who burned him to death? That was fine, good ghost protocol. And he stuck to his code of professionalism by only attacking them in their dreams like he swore to do. Well One Missed Call may be the first film in a series but it is more like those Nightmare On Elm Street sequels where Freddy’s run out victims with whom he has a direct connection and so he just fucks with whoever’s handy.

The ghost in this movie is just terrorizing a group of youngsters for no real reason other than she’s a bitch. She’s like that little girl from The Ring, only this ghost uses mobile phones. I guess that shows more forward thinking. Since The Ring came out, the VHS tape on which the evil ghost girl lived has become outdated first by DVD and now by Blu-Ray Discs, but travelling through phonecalls probably guarantees a longer career by avoiding getting dragged into some format war.

But at least that Ring ghost girl had a code and stuck to it. This One Missed Call chick’s M.O. is that she sends you a call telling you exactly when she’s going to kill you and then when you die she finds her next victim from your phone’s contact list. But she doesn’t stick to her code! One of her first victims is a cat, which did not have a phone and did not get a warning call. But I do like that the ghost didn’t get to kill one chick and called to reschedule. That’s classy.

This ghost also doesn’t do much of her own dirty work. Unlike Freddy or Ring Girl she’s got a posse of ghost palls who work like a Mission: Impossible squad and she even has Final Destination powers to kill you by manipulating circumstances. And that’s where she really gets cheap in my opinion. She doesn’t even show up much until the end. Granted, when she does show up it’s in a hoodie and she strikes a bunch of hip hop poses and that kinda made up for it, but still. Why do these other ghosts want to work for her? What kind of recruitment racket does she run? Why does she get all these powers? Why doesn’t she have to do her own leg work when that Ring Girl has to wait patiently for somebody to watch her video on an outdated format and then crawl out of the television and choke her victims herself?

But I mostly rented this One Missed Call movie with hopes of getting some entertainment along the lines of I Know Who Killed Me. I realize that maybe a movie like I Know Who Killed Me doesn’t come along that often and maybe it’s an unfair standard, and this film definitely didn’t reach that gold standard, but it’s got enough amusing shit to make me smile.

One of the main points of amusement in this film is how nobody’s reactions or actions make much sense. They all smile, and freakout, and get intense at random and frequently at odds with the scene they’re in. The film centers around a group of college kids led by Shannyn Sossamon and opens at a rowdy college keg party. It’s really funny because Shannyn and another chick seem to be working really hard in the kitchen on a full dinner and nice fresh salad when that really isn’t the type of thing you serve at college keg parties. My suggestion would be a keg.

Even though there’s loud music playing, lots of festive people around, and no reason to be afraid of anything yet, the characters all act really apprehensive and timid like they’re alone in a haunted house. The filmmakers didn’t really decide what would be scary in this movie so they make the characters scared of everything. The characters all jump and shriek at some things that make sense like demons, bugs crawling out of people’s skin, and zombies (yes there’s even a zombie this movie) but they also get scared of things like peepholes, xylophone music, and asthma inhalers.

It’s even stranger when we find out that Shannyn grew up in a dilapidated shithole where her mother (played by Laura Ellen Harring) wore flashy business suits and continually chucked lit cigarettes in her face while they waited for her father’s hung body upstairs to decompose. You think it would take more than an asthma puffer to rattle a chick raised in those circumstances.

Anyway, the youngsters start getting picked off by the ghost. But they actually put it together unbelievably quickly that the ghost is using their cell phones against them. They try talking to the police, but the police actually think that they should take it up with the customer support desk of their phone company. Yeah, sure, like getting killed by a ghost is just one of those services that you get signed up for like call trace or texting or a daily weather report.

The stupidity of the cops is the one thing in this movie on par with I Know Who Killed Me. I love how a group of friends are all getting rapidly killed with a phone record showing they were sent a message about the time of their death and all their bodies turn up with the same red marble shoved in their mouths and the cops just think it’s coincidence. Except for Detective Edward Burns, but he only gives a shit because his sister was one of the victims.

But even he’s a pretty crappy detective. He takes Shannyn along with him to a child services home to try and get some information out of a traumatized seven year-old girl who might have seen something. He tries acting nice by talking to her about her teddy bear until the aid worker mentions that the girl has been catatonic and mute since she came into their custody. Then Detective Burns steps aside and lets Shannyn mangle the little girl’s face and scream “Godammit!” at the girl right in front of the social worker. Even if Shannyn was deputized at this point I still think it was an incorrect use of the Good Cop Bad Cop approach.

They also break into an old lady’s house and while Shannyn is investigating in a bedroom Detective Burns comes up behind her, points an asthma puffer at her like a gun and pushes the puff button. She jumps in fear at first, but then they just start talking like that was a normal way to approach another person.

Anyway, they run around solving the ghost’s mystery to find out that they have nothing to do with the ghost and the ghost is basically like a prank caller or a chain letter who is unstoppable evil. After they do most of their investigating by abusing traumatized little girls and B&Es, they end up in an abandoned hospital and have some sort of zombie Die Hard moment where a zombie chases Shannyn through a ventilation shaft. The weird thing is that the ghost of the zombie comes back later. I’ve never seen that before in a movie, and I think it counts as two afterlives when one person gets to be a zombie and a ghost. It makes me want a movie where zombies square off against their own spirits. Oh yeah, and even though the zombie is a charred corpse who died in a firey blaze it has an undamaged cell phone, although it’s ringtone is not the theme from Dawn of the Dead.

But first, the various victims try things from other horror movies to beat the ghost. Try to imagine the end of Death Proof when a group of girls all grabbed Kurt Russel from his car and kicked and punched him around only with a cell phone taking the place of Kurt Russel. They actually tried this twice in case the first can of whoop-ass was stale or something.

Then there’s actually a scene where a priest tries to exorcize a cell phone on an altar. But it’s on a cheesy exorcism show like would be on the Fox Television Network or something, so they have the chick who’s phone it is sitting behind the altar in a clevagey top with a push bra so that while the priest is shouting about the power of Christ compelling the phone demon, the audience can oogle her knockers. Those damn Gideons.

This movie really makes me appreciate that Korean horror picture I saw a while ago called Cello. The ghost in that had a real purpose and reason for the victim she chose. But like I said, it seems like everybody gets to be a ghost these days. If somebody’s coming back from the dead they better have more of a sense of purpose and a code of professionalism on which they operate then displayed here. These assholes like The Ring girl and whoever the baddies were in The Grudge just need to get over themselves and find a constructive hobby into which they can direct their anger.

If you liked this, here are some other recommended articles:

Cello: A Movie About an Evil Cello

Do you like Asian horror?  This might be the best Asian horror film about an evil cello yet.

I Know Who Killed Me

A Robostripper Lindsay Lohan Production

Facebook: The Murderation of Bloodified Killenings

Treatment for my horror movie based on the Facebook phenomenon.