Chakushin ari (2003)

Directed by Takashi Miike [Other horror films: Ôdishon (1999), Tennen shôjo Man next: Yokohama hyaku-ya hen (1999), Tajuu jinkaku tantei saiko – Amamiya Kazuhiko no kikan (2000), Bijitâ Q (2001), Koroshiya 1 (2001), Katakuri-ke no kôfuku (2001), Gokudô kyôfu dai-gekijô: Gozu (2003), Sam gang 2 (2004, segment ‘Box’), Aku no kyôten (2012), Kuime (2014), Kamisama no iu tôri (2014), Gokudô daisensô (2015), Terra Formars (2016)]

Honestly, I have to say I’m a bit surprised by this one, and in this particular case, it’s not a positive surprise. This Japanese movie, despite the plenty of decent things I’ve heard about it over the years, just strikes me as a rather average film. It’s okay, it’s certainly watchable, but is it special? I don’t see it.

Chakushin ari, perhaps better known as One Missed Call, feels like Japanese ghost movie 101. It’s based on a novel by Yasushi Akimoto, and has plenty of what you’d expect from a Japanese ghost movie, such as a long-haired child spirit, some mystery behind the spirit and why the spirit is wreaking havoc, and the same jump scares you’ve likely seen before.

None of this makes this movie bad, but it does feel a little generic. It is true, also, that I’m not a big J-horror fan – honestly, I could probably count the modern Japanese horror films I’ve seen on two hands, and that’s after a finger or two gets lost in the garbage disposal. To be fair, I do rather love Dark Water, but this is directed by Takashi Miike of all people, so I sort of expected a little more.

I was mostly able to follow this story along though – sometimes Asian horror films confuse the hell out of me (such as A Tale of Two Sisters or Ju-on), but this one seemed pretty simple. I didn’t really care for the ending, but still, at least the story was okay. It even added spices of dark subject matter such as parental abuse into the mix, which of course is always good fun.

Only two performances really mattered here, and that’d be Kô Shibasaki (Battle Royale, Kakashi / Scarecrow, and Kuime / Over Your Dead Body) and Shin’ichi Tsutsumi. The amusing thing is, I wasn’t sure of the name of Tsutsumi’s character until the final twenty minutes or so. Shibasaki does solid with the role she has, and Tsutsumi is a comforting character at times, but neither one is particularly note-worthy.

What is sort of odd is that I got the sense I knew where this film was going – we open with a group of six friends eating together at a restaurant, and I was expecting a Final Destination-type thing in which each of these six friends would have to deal with the cell phone curse, but after it passes through three of them, the other two just disappear, and we’re left with Ko Shibasaki’s character, which felt sort of odd.

Actually, on the whole idea of the curse, in which someone gets a call from themselves in the future, sort of foretelling of when they’ll die, this movie does have an aged technological feel to it, as everyone is carrying around flip phones. What’s amusing about this, in my perspective, is that I’m an old-fashioned guy, and in fact, I still use a flip phone to this day, so that added an extra element to the movie, and at least personalized it.

Even so, One Missed Call just felt on the generic side to me. There wasn’t much of an emotional impact toward the end – I mean, they tried, but it just didn’t hit me in the same way the end of either Black Rat or Dark Water hits me – and while I can appreciate the song during the credits, I still think the movie comes out to about average. Not bad, just average.

Like I said, though, I’m not the biggest fan of J-horror, so it’s quite possible that it will do more for those who are than it ever would have for me.

7/10