One Missed Call (2003 film)

Lore & Background

The film's plot centers on a curse transmitted via cell phone voicemails, where victims receive a message from their own number dated days in the future, containing their own voice and a scream. The curse claims victims one minute after the previous death, and each victim is found with a red jawbreaker in their mouth. The investigation leads to a hospital and a girl named Mimiko Mizunuma, who died from an asthma attack, and her mother Marie, suspected of Munchausen syndrome by proxy. A twist reveals that Mimiko was the abuser of her sister Nanako, and that Mimiko's spirit continues the cycle of abuse through the curse.

Reader's Guide

One Missed Call is significant as a mainstream J-horror film that, according to critics, dutifully regurgitates the apparitions, aesthetic, and themes of its genre predecessors. The film received mixed reviews, with a Rotten Tomatoes consensus calling it 'too unoriginal to recommend' despite benefiting from director Takashi Miike's visual flair. Entertainment Weekly noted it could almost be a parody of J-horror tropes, while The New York Times remarked it staggers under the weight of its director's taste for baroque excess. The film spawned a sequel, One Missed Call 2 (2005), a ten-episode Japanese television drama (2005), and a final installment, One Missed Call: Final (2006). Its English-language remake, released in 2008, was critically panned.

Did You Know?

• The film premiered at the Tokyo International Film Festival on November 3, 2003, under the English title You've Got a Call.
• The curse is transmitted via cell phone voicemails from the victim's own number, with victims found with red jawbreakers in their mouths.
• The plot involves Munchausen syndrome by proxy, with a mother suspected of harming her children for attention.
• Arrow Films released the film on Blu-ray in the UK, US, and Canada in February 2020.