
Hollywood have once again turned to Asia for their horror film fodder, this time with a remake of Takashi Miike’s 2003 Japanese movie One Missed Call, which Warner Brothers are hoping will find an audience in January.
Traditionally, not really the best time to release a horror movie, with the failure of Black Christmas last year but in 2005 it did work quite well for White Noise.
The American remake stars Ed Burns & Shannyn Sossamon and is based on the idea that people start receiving voice-mails on their phone from their future selves detailing the date and time of their death. Of course in classic Final Destination and The Ring style, this isn’t a joke and people really do begin to die once they have received this message, leaving our lead character to figure out why.
Will switching their phone off work? I doubt it.
Unfortunately, there doesn’t look to be anything substantially new in this trailer and it’s just a re-working of the above movies. That’s not to say it can’t work and that ring tone is pretty cool and I do actually think the concept has some scope to explore deeper and with me not having seen the original, I’m intrigued to see how this thing ends. Although, I’m banking on a lame ending… these movies always have them.
French director Eric Valette helms his first American movie with the script adapted by Andrew Klavan, the novelist behind Don’t Say a Word, which was made into a feature film in 2001.
I saw both these actors at Comic-Con for the panel on this film. Neither Ed Burns and Shannyn Sossamon nor the audience could have looked less enthused.
The worst part, Shannyn Sossamon was extremely uncomfortable and acted like she was stuck in a room full of germs. Her answers to questions were a little on the airhead side of things. Who knows, maybe she was tired.
The worst part though was when both actors handed out a couple of iPhones to some of the comic-con attendees who asked questions. Instead of handing one out, she tossed one at one of the lucky iPhone winning bastards like she was feeding a dangerous animal.
Comment by Despacio | August 31, 2007
Just FYI the original One Missed Call is not Korean but Japanese.
This would make sense since Takashi Miike is obviously Japanese as well.
Comment by Oldboy | August 31, 2007
Thanks for the update Oldboy, I’ve corrected my mistake.
Comment by Matt Holmes | August 31, 2007
Looks like a total dud and Despacio’s comments don’t help matters any.
Comment by Marina | August 31, 2007