Movie Review for One Missed Call

Worth Missing

by Philbert Ortiz Dy
posted on Thursday, January 31, 2008 in Movie Reviews

One Missed Call has already gained a reputation for being the worst reviewed movie of 2008 (so far). Coming into a film knowing that, one begins to think that it can’t all be as bad as they say. I’m disappointed to say that it really is that bad. One Missed Call isn’t the worst movie I’ve seen, but it comes pretty close.

The film is about a group of friends who suddenly get strange voice messages on their phones. The messages seem to come from the future, and they seem to have been sent by themselves. They hear their own voice across the line, revealing details about their impending death. Each of these friends die one by one, exactly as the voice message predicts. It is up to Beth and police detective Jack Andrews to figure out what’s going on.

Supernatural stories, by their very nature, don’t have to make a lot of sense. But One Missed Call takes it to another level. The film’s plot is terribly incoherent, which is strange since the concept is actually really straightforward. Person gets call, person gets killed. And yet the film is so muddled and confused that the characters themselves don’t always seem to know where they are or why they’re there. The film feels flimsy, like a series of strange contrivances that don’t really lead to any satisfying conclusion. This film can’t even get the time right.

The scares are the big appeal of this film, and the main reason people are going to see this movie. And there are a few creepy moments, but overall, the main trick of this film is to surprise you. It is yet another film with a series of illogical scares, designed mostly to get screams out of jumpy people. These scares don’t add to any overall effect, and eventually, it just gets old. You might as well hire someone to come to your house and randomly pop a balloon throughout the day. And it would be fine if the film was at all fun, but it isn’t. It isn’t even entertainingly campy enough to at least be a fun ride.

Shannyn Sossamon and Ed Burns head up this doomed cast. Sossamon has never really been good, and this film makes no exception for her. Ed Burns, on the other hand, has a long history of some pretty good performances. One Missed Call, however, will probably go down as the worst performance of his life. His acting would be laughable, if it wasn’t so painful. It’s like he chose an expression at the start of the film, and decided to stick with it.

One Missed Call is the worst reviewed movie of the year (so far) for a reason. It’s just an incoherent mess of a film; a strange, poorly thought-out Hollywood trend cash-in that doesn’t really do anything well. By the end of the film, most audiences will probably be wondering what in the world they’d just watched. It’s just that bad.

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