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The online film magazine Combustible Celluloid offers new movie reviews, DVD reviews, film reviews, actor interviews, actress interviews, director interviews, film books and all things cinema related for the thoughtful and passionate. Online for ten years! Over 3000 reviews!

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One Missed Call (2008)

Rating: 2 1/2 Stars (out of 4)

Monster's 'Call'

By Jeffrey M. Anderson

Buy One Missed Call on DVD

It may have been a mistake to hire a Frenchman to remake a movie by the Japanese mad genius Takashi Miike (Audition, Ichi the Killer), but while director Eric Valette fails to do anything with the derivative plot (borrowed shamelessly from "Ringu," "Ju-On" and other Japanese classics) or the interesting cast, he manages an unusual, appealingly quiet tone. Unlike most knocked-off horror remakes, this one foregoes relentless, shaky-cam nausea and actually finds time for rest breaks, and even uses old-fashioned make-up effects instead of hollow, computer-generated horrors. Shannyn Sossamon stars as a girl whose friends receive mysterious cell phone messages and meet their untimely deaths. Ed Burns plays the cop who believes her story. Adapted from a novel by Yasushi Akimoto. (See also my longer review at Cinematical.com.)

AskMen.com: One Missed Call

Starring: Shannyn Sossamon, Edward Burns, Ana Claudia Talancón, Ray Wise, Azura Skye, Johnny Lewis, Jason Beghe, Margaret Cho, Meagan Good, Rhoda Griffis, Dawn Dininger, Ariel Winter, Sarah Kubik, Raegan Lamb, Karen Beyer, Alana Locke, Dave Spector, Mary Lynn Owen, Roy McCrerey, Lauren Peyton, Greg Corbett
Written by: Andrew Klavan, based on a novel by Yasushi Akimoto and a 2003 screenplay by Minako Daira
Directed by: Eric Valette
MPAA Rating: PG-13 for intense sequences of violence and terror, frightening images, some sexual material and thematic elements
Running Time: 87 minutes
Date: January 4, 2008