One Missed Call

"Dude! It's me. No, wait a minute. It's you. Yeah, I'm calling me. And guess what? We're gonna die. Here's what it sounds like, dude! [insert screeching and choking here] Oh, and pick up some milk on the way home."

One Missed Call is a cell-centric horror movie (think: the original One Missed Call directed by Takashi Miike, Phone directed by Byeong-ki Ahn, and the upcoming Stephen King's Cell) about what might happen if a sinister spirit were to somehow get sucked into the mobile network.

With dialogue full of gems like this — "From now on, I only go to parties where no one gets cremated" and "Any dead people call, we're not home" — the CGI-heavy horror flick follows the wreck, ruin and rings of Beth (Shannyn Sossamon), a college gal whose friends are dropping like the calls they've all missed. Things have evolved, you see: In The Ring, you actually had to pick up the phone to get your death letter. Now, voice mail does the dirty deed just fine.

After many horrifying sights and a few attempts to disconnect her cellular service, Beth gets on the hook with Det. Jack Andrews (Ed Burns) and the unlikely duo look for the source of the scares everywhere from old hospitals to autopsy archives (in the latter, as Andrews brings up some rather graphic graphics of D.B.'s, Beth says, "I don't know how you stand looking at this stuff!" I feel she will be speaking for the viewing audience at that point.)

One Missed Call does have an incredibly ghoulish and rebellious opening scene, and the leads aren't half-bad (though they do both look as though that'd rather be elsewhere), but overall this is an incredibly disappointing follow up to director Eric Valette's French-language terror treat, Malfique. The tired story is beyond told, the resolution of the mystery is a downer, and worst of all, the overuse of CGI is cheesier than my favorite Monty Python sketch.

This is one call you should definitely miss.

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Reviewed by Staci Layne Wilson