“THOSE DAMNED ROBOCALLS!”

By Raymond Benson

The J-Horror phenomenon (the modern Japanese horror films that erupted in the late 1990s and continue to this day) enjoyed serious success and critical acclaim in its early period for bringing some originality to the horror genre in general. Motion pictures of the ilk are usually derived from ghost stories, Japanese folklore, and revenge tales, mixed with a modern sensibility, a dash of gruesomeness, and often a creepy dripping-wet ghost-girl (a yūrei) with long black hair covering her face coming to get you in your dreams or out of, say, a television set, in your waking hours.

In this case, the yūrei is Mimiko (played by Karen Oshima), a young girl who is probably between the age of ten and fifteen (it’s hard to tell). She is a spirit with the ability to manipulate your cell phone service and kill you with a voice message. She’s the ultimate robocaller, guaranteed to spam your very life. Tellingly, the original picture, One Missed Call, was released back in 2003, when the robocall problem was not yet a thing; so, in a way, director Takashi Miike’s film (and the novel Chakushin Ari by Yasushi Akimoto, upon which the film is based) was a canny prophesy. The entire film franchise plays on the then-growing problem of people addicted to their phones. The “horror” in all three movies is a metaphor for our dependence on a once elite technology that had finally become available to the masses.

The conceit is this—your phone rings with an eerie, nursery-rhyme-like melody that isn’t the regular ringtone. By the time you answer the phone, the call has gone to voice mail. The display reads: “One Missed Call.” Oddly, the caller ID indicates that the call has come from your own phone number (today that’s a sure sign of a robocaller or hacker, but back in 2003 this would have been a sinister mystery). When you listen to the voice mail, you hear yourself say something, which turns out to be the very last words you will ever speak, followed by a scream. The time stamp of the call is always not far in the future—usually the next day. Then, sure enough, at the appointed time, something happens that causes you to unwittingly say those last words, and then you die a horrible, violent death. Afterwards, the curse infects all the contacts in your phone, and soon all your friends and family start receiving the calls. So, yes, it acts like a computer virus, but it’s controlled by a ghost who can appear, grab you, and hide in creepy-crawly spaces in your room.

Sounds far-fetched, to be sure. In fact, this trope could only work within the often-audacious milieu of J-Horror. An American remake released in 2008 was a stupendous failure because the concept was so ridiculous by that time. Okay, the original trilogy is pretty silly, too. However, the Japanese cultural sensibility, the context of the time period involved, and the acceptance of a paranormal force that can do anything, combine to work well enough to be entertaining.

One Missed Call sets up the franchise with a story about a college girl, Yumi (Ko Shibasaki), whose friends get the calls and die, so she sets about attempting to solve the mystery herself. She teams up with a detective, Yamashita (Shinichi Tsutsumi), but Mimiko is much more powerful than they can imagine. Needless to say, things don’t go well for the intrepid couple.

One Missed Call 2 continues the tale, but the supernatural “rules” of this universe change—in fact, the rules never seem to be consistent—by bringing in yet another ghostly entity, Li Li, another young girl who, when she was alive, had psychic powers. The people in her village were afraid of her, so they sewed her lips together to prevent her from cursing them, and they buried her in a mine. Now she’s also manipulating the phones as well as Mimiko, who still holds a grudge. While the storyline here is extremely muddled and all over the place, director Tsukamoto manages to deliver it all with flair. In this reviewer’s opinion, this middle feature of the trilogy is the scariest.

One Missed Call: Final jumps to a different set of characters, this time a group of high school kids on a field trip to South Korea. Bullying is a theme here, and the girl who is a victim plays host to Mimiko (again, the rules on how the preternatural elements work have altered again). This one has some striking moments, but it’s decidedly the weakest of the three pictures.

Interestingly, a Japanese television series based on the first film was launched in 2005, in-between the second and third pictures. It lasted one season and utilized characters from the first film (but played by different actors).

Arrow Video continues to produce high quality Blu-ray packages with this product. A two-disk set, the trilogy contains all three films in high definition 1080p presentations with lossless DTS-HG Master Audio 5.1 and PCM 2.0 soundtracks. There are optional English subtitles. Supplements abound with lengthy behind-the-scenes “making of” documentaries for all three films, a couple of tie-in shorts for 2 and Final, deleted scenes, separate cast and director interviews, trailers, and other interesting content. An audio commentary by Miike biographer Tom Mes accompanies the first picture, as well as an alternate ending. The enclosed booklet is thick with production stills. And, as with many of Arrow’s releases, the sleeve on the jewel case is reversible, with original poster art on one side and newly commissioned artwork by Matt Griffin on the other.

The One Missed Call Trilogy may provide the viewer with some eye-rolls, chuckles, and head-scratching, but it’s also got enough stylish scares in it to satisfy ardent J-Horror fans and horror fans in general.

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