People are obsessed with cell phones. They talk while shopping for groceries, getting their hair done, even running on treadmills at the gym. I’ve seen a person talk on a cell phone while swimming in a pool. With this in mind, it isn’t surprising that there is now one more horror movie about ghosts travelling through cell phones. Want to witness the exorcism of a cell phone? Behold One Missed Call, the Hollywood remake of Takashi Miike’s Japanese horror film of the same name.

This movie’s cell phone-jumping ghost plays by unique rules. Sometimes it is a physical creature and attacks people like the ghost from The Ring. At other times it causes freak fatal accidents like the ghost in Final Destination. Often, it finds its prey by searching through a former victim’s cell phone address book. It gives a few days notice by leaving a post-dated voicemail of the victim’s voice right before death and is kind enough to also leave red candies in the deceased’s mouth, too.

The people dying are college students befriended by Beth (Shannyn Sossamon), a former abused child searching for answers in her study of psychology. After several of her friends receive those mysterious post-dated missed calls and meet horrifying demises, she approaches a burnt-out detective named Jack (Edward Burns) for help. Since Jack’s sister was killed by the cell-phone ghost, he shares her concerns. Eventually, Beth receives a call from the ghost, too. Can she uncover the mystery before it is too late?

One Missed Call should have gone the Final Destination route and used the cheesy concept to exploit creative death sequences. Even with wooden acting and slack direction, the movie could have worked as torture-porn like Hostel and Saw if the body count was high enough and the methods of disposal fresh and interesting. There isn’t much, however, One Missed Call can do to satisfy horror fans.

It is aimed at kids just coming out in body hair and adults won’t find much violence or gore in the movie. One hand is all that is needed to count the family-friendly death sequences during the film’s 87 minutes. During a time when savagery has reached a roaring level of popularity, why censor a creative – albeit ridiculous – idea and make the film unappealing to the real audiences just to make it accessible to kids who wouldn’t even be allowed to drive to the movie theatre?

Blake French