One Missed Call (2003 film)

One Missed Call
Directed by Takashi Miike
Produced by Yoichi Arishige
Fumio Inoue
Kazuo Kuroi
Hiroshi Okawa
Naoki Sato
Screenplay by Minako Daira
Based on Chakushin Ari
by Yasushi Akimoto
Starring
Music by Kôji Endô
Cinematography Hideo Yamamoto
Edited by Yasushi Shimamura
Production
company
Distributed by Toho Company
Release date
Running time
 112 minutes
Country Japan
Language Japanese
Budget $1.7 million[1]
Box office $16,234,612[2]

One Missed Call (Japanese: 着信アリ, Hepburn: Chakushin ari) is a 2003 Japanese horror film directed by Takashi Miike and written by Minako Daira. The film is based on the novel Chakushin Ari by Yasushi Akimoto. The plot revolves around Yumi Nakamura, a young psychology student whose friend Yoko gets a strange voice message on her cell phone. The message is dated two days in the future and Yoko can hear herself screaming in it. After Yoko mysteriously dies, her death sets off a chain of events which leads Yumi to discover that this phenomenon has been occurring throughout Japan long before Yoko received an alarming call from her future self. When Yumi receives a call with the date and time of her death, she struggles to save herself and learn the identity of the mastermind behind the calls.

The film received an English adaptation in 2008.

Plot

While out with university friends, Yoko Okazaki misses a call on her cell phone, but the ID is from herself. She and her friend Yumi Nakamura listen to Yoko's voice message, dated two days in the future, where she says it's starting to rain, followed by a horrendous scream. Two days later, Yumi receives a call from Yoko and realizes that she is on the exact same routine as the voicemail. Yoko screams as she is violently tossed and then thrown off an overpass onto a speeding commuter train; her severed hand is seen dialing a number. Although authorities assume suicide, her schoolmates recall other similar deaths that were preceded by the voicemails. Yoko's boyfriend Kenji Kawai tells Yumi he got the voicemail, but disbelieves it. Yumi watches as Kenji is pulled into an elevator shaft. A red jawbreaker candy falls out of his mouth as his phone dials another number by itself.

Yumi's friend Natsumi Konishi stays at Yumi's apartment when she hears the same cursed ringtone. A video message dated two days later shows Natsumi with a ghastly arm behind her. Natsumi's attempt to discard the phone proves futile as she gets the same ringtone and voicemail message from an unrelated phone. She agrees to a television producer's offer to meet with an exorcist. Yumi meets Hiroshi Yamashita, a detective who has been investigating the curse that had also claimed his sister Ritsuko. Yamashita shares that the next victim is called a minute after the death, and that the victims have red jawbreakers in their mouths.

Yamashita and Yumi trace a number common to the victims' phones to a hospital which has since changed its building and number. Yumi recognizes a sound she heard before Kenji's death: a spritz from an asthma inhaler. They trace the autopsy records to a girl Mimiko Mizunuma who had died from an asthma attack, with her mother Marie going missing. Ritsuko's journal shows that whenever Mimiko had an attack, her sister Nanako would suffer some injury at the same time. They suspect Munchausen syndrome by proxy, where a parent purposely makes a child sick so she can take care of her and be praised for it. Natsumi's exorcism goes horribly wrong and she is killed when her body horribly contorts. Yumi then gets the cursed voicemail on her phone where she says "Why me?" and then screams.

At the Mizunuma residence, Yumi finds a torn-up family photo, but screams when she sees a figure in a cupboard. There, Yamashita finds an old camcorder. At an orphanage, Yamashita meets Nanako, who is unable to talk, but her teddy bear plays the same song as the ringtone. At the old abandoned hospital building, Yumi is haunted by the spirit in all sorts of ways from playing the ringtone to trying to grab and drag her. Yamashita finds Yumi and they lock themselves in a room. Yumi's cellphone messages that she will die in one minute. Yamashita finds an arm nearby clutching an active cellphone, and stops its call. After the minute elapses, Yamashita comforts Yumi, but when he uncovers a crate holding Marie's body, it comes to life when Yumi approaches it. With Yamashita locked out, Yumi sees her own abusive mother's image in Marie and apologizes for leaving her. They hug, and Marie's body returns to a corpse.

The Mizunuma videotape reveals that Marie did not abuse her children, but that Mimiko had actually cut Nanako and would then get an asthma attack. Nanako reveals that she would get a candy from Mimiko if she stayed silent. Eventually Marie found out the truth and took only Nanako the last time, leaving Mimiko to die. Yamashita rushes to Yumi's apartment as Yumi is being haunted by Mimiko; Yumi says "Why me?" and screams. When Yamashita arrives, he finds Yumi acting like nothing happened, but is stabbed by her with a kitchen knife when they embrace, and sees Yumi appearing as Mimiko in the mirror. After a brief dream where he helps the dying Mimiko with an inhaler, Yamashita wakes in a hospital where Yumi, brandishing the knife behind her back, feeds him a candy with her mouth and smiles.

Principal cast

Character Japanese actor English voice actor
Yumi Nakamura Kou Shibasaki Kate Davis
Hiroshi Yamashita Shinichi Tsutsumi Liam O'Brien
Natsumi Konishi Kazue Fukiishi Jennifer Sekiguchi
Ichiro Fujieda Yutaka Matsuchige Kim Strauss
Oka Goro Kishitani Joey Capps
Detective Yusaku Motomiya Renji Ishibashi Michael McConnohie

Critical reception

One Missed Call has received mixed reviews by critics, who generally cite it as being too similar to previous Japanese horror films such as Ring and Ju-on: The Grudge.[3]

Entertainment Weekly wrote, "One Missed Call is so unoriginal that the movie could almost be a parody of J-horror tropes", yet "Miike, for a while at least, stages it with a dread-soaked visual flair that allows you to enjoy being manipulated."[4] LA Weekly called it "a prolonged, maddening, predictable—yet curiously pleasurable—descent into incomprehensibility."[3] The Philadelphia Inquirer stated that "Miike, whose work usually veers into more surreal, experimental terrain, uses creepy-crawly juxtaposition, grisly violence, and dark humor to create a nightmare scenario for the text-message generation."[5]

Sequels

A sequel, One Missed Call 2 was released in 2005. One Missed Call, a ten-episode Japanese television drama was released the same year. One Missed Call: Final, the third and concluding installment of the Japanese trilogy was released in 2006.

Remake

In 2008, Warner Bros. remade the film as One Missed Call, starring Shannyn Sossamon.

References

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