Critic Reviews

Even with nothing at stake emotionally, though, he conjures some real scares, and the finale is as much a head-scratcher as a heart-stopper -- in a good way.

One Missed Call plays like a good cover song. It's not just a repetition of the previous tune.

Combines scares and chuckles with good production values.

Miike doesn't do enough to shake up the formula, but he's still expert at delivering shocks, and when the level of craftsmanship is as high as it is in the white-knuckle finale, originality doesn't seem to matter anymore.

One Missed Call, one of the five movies he made in 2003, is no more than Miike's shot at generating a polished, rote, expertly composed J-horror flick.

The film is slow and somber during the windup but pretty scary in the follow-through.

One Missed Call is so unoriginal that the movie could almost be a parody of J-horror tropes, yet Miike, for a while at least, stages it with a dread-soaked visual flair that allows you to enjoy being manipulated.

Where "Ringu" derived its power from the simplicity of its premise and the purity of its execution, One Missed Call staggers under the weight of its director's taste for baroque excess.

Strictly generic, it does little more than regurgitate the J-horror hits "Ringu" and "Ju-on."

It's a prolonged, maddening, predictable -- yet curiously pleasurable -- descent into incomprehensibility.