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One Missed Call 2 (2005)

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Overall Rating 54%
Overall Rating
Ranked #6,280
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Connections: One Missed Call

The One Missed Call curse has become an urban legend in Tokyo. Your cell phone rings with a chilling tone. Your violent demise is heard on the other end. Moments later, you die a horrible death. However, the curse has mutated to fool a wiser public and reach a broader audience. The curse indiscriminately infects anyone who answers and then works its way through every number in your phone book. Trying to solve the mystery, a couple of friends and a journalist trace the lineage of the curse to Taiwan. Once the origins are discovered, it's a race against time to put an end to the horror. --Amazon
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Review by Chad
Added: May 21, 2006
Asian horror, for the most part, dominates American horror in the actual scares department. You won't get the huge body counts over there and you'll likely not find a fraction of the gore, but when it comes to building a frightening atmosphere and actually making the home audience squirm, nobody has those Asians beat. This brings us to acclaimed director Takashi Miike who, for those not in the know, is one of the best Asian directors working today. A few years ago, he decided to capitalize on the budding popularity of Japanese cinema in American and make a film that mixed the Japanese style of horror with the American style. That movie was One Missed Call (the American remake is coming next year, of course), and while I wasn't a huge fan of it, it was apparently successful enough over in Japan to spawn a number of sequels. This is the first.

A word of caution before getting into the synopsis of this film. When you begin watching this film, it quickly becomes apparent that director Renpei Tsukamoto assumes that you have seen the first film. As a result of that (rightful) assumption, he makes no bones about mentioning the end twists of the original in developing his storyline here. As a result of that, this synopsis will likely spoil the original for those of you who haven't seen it. Proceed onwards as you feel necessary.

It all begins when school teacher Kyoko Okudera (Japanese TV star Mimura) decides to go out for dinner and drinks with her fellow teacher friend. This is an almost nightly event, as we soon find out that Kyoko's boyfriend Naoto Sakurai (Yû Yoshizawa) works there. The story breaks away from the romance between these two quite quickly, as we cut to the owner of the place (who doubles as the chef) who is cooking some food in the back. His daughter's cell phone, laying on the counter behind him, begins to ring that creepy ring-tone that we first heard in the original. Thinking that the caller is his daughter's boyfriend (a guy that this chef is not a fan of), he picks up the phone and immediately begins to lay into the caller. However, he soon finds out that the person on the other end of his daughter's phone is none other than... his daughter. She tells him that "he shouldn't leave the oil so close to the fire" just before breaking out into a bloodcurdling scream. Understandably upset, the chef starts to tell Naoto what just happened, when the door behind them slowly opens, and in walks... his daughter. She has no knowledge of the phone call and claims to have never said anything about oil or fire. Everyone is a bit freaked out, but it's eventually dropped and Naoto carries on with his waiter duties.

Later that night, Naoto heads to the back to tell the chef that he's leaving, and he finds the chef dead - face-down in a boiling pot of oil. The cops are eventually called in, and when the detail about the phone call leaks out, a news reporter by the name of Takako Nozoe (Asaka Seto) remembers what happened "last year" (aka, in the last movie) and decides to do some investigating here. The phone call curse, we soon find out, kills the recipient of the call and then spreads onwards to everyone in the now-deceased's address book... and Kyoko is the next one on the list. The three heroes of the film have just three days to solve the mystery of the curse and find out how to put an end to it... but they, and we at home, quickly find out that it's just a little bit more complex this time around.

The original movie was decent enough, but it was nothing stellar. For those of you who haven't read my review of it, I'll summarize it as such: the movie was alright, but it felt like a mish-mash of every other popular Japanese film, and coming from Takashi Miike, it was quite disappointing. This movie carries on with that tradition of throwing in aspects from a wide variety of Asian horror films and the end result is a complete and utter mess. Much like the original, this one is decent enough, but it's nothing to go out looking for either.

What hurts the movie the most, besides the constant feeling of "Didn't I already see this scene in another movie?", is the sheer amount of subplots. The cause of the curse in the first one is rehashed and the characters explore that for a while, but then we find out that that revelation was just a small kink in the huge chain of events that started this curse. The "real" cause is eventually found out, then we find out that Kyoko has a back-story of her own which is explored for a while, and then another ghost pops up that... well, to be honest, I have no clue where it came from or how it was explained. A number of other pieces of the story eventually come into play, pieces which I won't reveal here for fear of spoilers, but suffice it to say that there is a lot going on in the movie. The storyline is great at first (even though it's been done before), but it really starts to get sketchy towards the last half of the film.

The movie does have some creepy scenes and it's not downright bad, but you'll really have to use the old thinking-cap to piece everything together when the end credits roll. After you piece everything together and that final "Ah-hah!" hits, you'll likely find that the effort probably wasn't worth it. Also, if you're new to the world of Asian horror, this movie will hit you with a number of shocks and frightening scenes; if, however, you're experienced in their cinematic offerings, you'll likely have a big case of déjà vu throughout most of the running time. It's just a shame that these scenes didn't have an original (or even good) storyline linking them together. 4/10.
Christopher #1: Christopher - added December 25, 2006 at 8:05am
It would not have been possible to include more screaming in this film. The bitches were shouting while they were crying, what the hell was that? Then the guys were screaming too! Nearing the end, Kyoko gets viciously dragged through all sorts of wet dirt, but when she hops up off the ground her hands are a little scuffed and her nails look like they just had a manicure. During that whole monstrosity, her boyfriend starts getting thrown into the air and up against a fence. When the hell did the ghost get those powers?! It's not even like the original was fantastic either, yet this couldn't even live up to that. But that's not it, oh no... there's a part three out now! Imagine how bad the American remake is going to be.
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