ONE MISSED CALL
(Review)

Eric Vallete’s English-language remake of Takashi Miike’s Chakushin Ari (which was itself Miwako Daira’s adaptation of the novel by Yasushi Akimoto) was originally scheduled for an August 24 2007 US release.
That soon changed to a January 4 2008 release. Now, a release date change of this sort is more often than not a bad sign. Coupled with its ultimate release falling in the early—or as defined in the Hollywood dictionary, “dead”—months of the year (another bad sign), where studios have perennially tossed their less than desirable product, a stigma began to taint One Missed Call even before it opened.
Still, I hoped for the best, and bolstered by that creepy-a$$ one-sheet, gave it a fair look-see.

With a handful of variations here and there, the set-up is pretty much that of Miike’s Chakushin Ari: Beth Raymond (Shannyn Sossamon) bears witness to a number of her friends falling prey to prophetic cell phone calls—signaled by an eerie ringtone—that serve as harbingers of their doom, before she gets her own call, and must solve the mystery lest she end up facing her own apparently impending death.
What Vallete and One Missed Call screenwriter Andrew Klavan so clearly fail to capture though is the air of dread and tense anticipation evident in Miike’s take. Nowhere is this sad—and ultimately fatal—shortcoming so painfully evident as in One Missed Call’s redux of a bravura setpiece from Chakushin Ari, which involves a victim’s death on live TV.
Here, we have American Miracles, run by Ted Summers (genre powerhouse Ray Wise), who has exorcist Ray Purvis (Jason Beghe, who incidentally recently walked away from Scientology in a big stink) attempt to eradicate the cell phone curse.
With its Christian iconography, non-existent suspense, and fairly ludicrous “body of Christ compels you to leave this cell phone” blather, this sequence turns out to be the most disappointing in the entire film.
When you’ve got Ray Wise and this is all you have him do, it’s a waste of everyone’s time.

There are attempts to introduce elements not present in Miike’s version though, particularly in having the intended victims begin seeing disturbing presences all around them (which is where the one-sheet image comes in), but this really isn’t anything new in a horror film; as I recall, this was also done in The Exorcism of Emily Rose.
In One Missed Call, these moments happen so often that they quickly feel like desperate attempts to continually scare the audience, when all they really do is get pretty boring, pretty quickly.
And while the “abuse as a cycle” theme is still here, it sadly also feels muted somehow, certainly less potent than in Miike’s Chakushin Ari.

Admittedly, the idea behind One Missed Call’s climax—which avoids that ludicrously monstrous cheat in Chakushin Ari’s final moments and that ambiguous last shot—makes more sense than the Japanese version’s.
Tragically, it isn’t executed very well, and plays out as horribly anti-climactic, with one of those annoying “Yes, we can have a sequel if we so choose” last shots, that I’d rather take Miike’s ending, flaws and all, than this mess.
And yes, Miike had some questionable funhouse scares in the hospital sequence, but none as laughably ridiculous as One Missed Call’s baby with a cell phone bit. (Of course, if I were to see that in real life, in the burnt-out shell of an abandoned hospital, I probably wouldn’t be laughing. On the screen though, it’s a golden MST3K moment…)
Oh, and why the vengeful ghost bothered with Luna—when the poor cat clearly didn’t have a cell phone—was just a bad decision to try and get a cheap scare. Is it worth it though when you could end up pissing PETA off?
And yes, Dave Stewart wrote and performed One Missed Call’s ringtone, and I love Stewart, and his work with Annie Lennox, as well as the Spiritual Cowboys, but I must say, Chakushin Ari’s ringtone is still far more disturbing… (Incidentally, Stewart is the founding member of Nokia’s recently established Artist Advisory Council. Presumably, he will do more in this illustrious position than compose murderous ringtones...)

In the end, as much as I thought Miike aimed ambitiously high with Chakushin Ari and didn’t quite hit the mark, Valette’s One Missed Call just kind of lies there, listless and droning, like an unanswered cell phone on mute, its battery winding down, just begging you to shut it off.

Parting shot: A review of Chakushin Ari can be found in the Archive.

(One Missed Call OS courtesy of impawards.com [design by Art Machine, A Trailer Park Company]; images courtesy of bloody-disgusting.com.)

IN THE INTERESTS OF ALL THINGS RECYCLABLE (4)
CHAKUSHIN ARI
(ONE MISSED CALL)

With Hollywood’s take on Chakushin Ari having gotten its US release on January 4, I decided to resurrect this one for the World Wide Web. Enjoy.

Looking back…

Chakushin Ari (One Missed Call) is one of the latest films from the insanely prolific Japanese director Takashi Miike, and is the first of his films I’ve seen that is set squarely in the Asian supernatural horror genre.
The film revolves around Yumi Nakamura (Kou Shibasaki, from Norio Tsuruta’s Kakashi and Kinji Fukasaku’s Battle Royale), whose friend Yoko, dies after receiving a call on her cell phone, a call that was apparently made from the very same phone: what sounds like Yoko’s own voice, speaking a few innocent words, then screaming. The call is dated two days in the future. Two days after receiving the call, Yoko dies, after uttering the same words on the mysterious call.
In the vein of films like Hideo Nakata’s Ringu and Takashi Shimizu‘s Ju-on, a sinister chain of deaths begins, all presaged by the receiving of a phone call, as the future victim speaks his or her last words, the impending date of death conveniently displayed on the cell.

Exploring the theme of the co-opting of modern technology by ancient, supernatural forces for their own malevolent ends (as was done in Ringu/The Ring, Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s Kairo, and of course, its English-language remake, Jim Sonzero‘s Pulse), Chakushin Ari also delves into the idea of abuse as a cycle—a chain that must be broken, lest it revolve endlessly, its touch reaching out to others far removed from the initial victim, connected only through chance and circumstance.
And unlike Ringu, where the breaking of the chain was required simply because it would save a character’s life, in Chakushin Ari, not only would that prevent someone’s death, but there is also a broader context for which the breaking of the cycle is necessary. In that respect, there is a thematic cohesiveness in Chakushin Ari that is absent in Ringu.

As far as the mechanics of the “curse” goes, whereas in Ringu, anyone who happened to watch Sadako’s videotape would fall prey to her rage, in Chakushin Ari, anyone who is part of the cellular network is a potential victim, and these days, that’s practically everybody.
And shutting off your phone, disconnecting yourself from the network, canceling your cellular subscription, destroying and throwing your phone away, isn’t enough. Your phone will turn itself on, your SIM will reactivate, your phone will find its way back to you, intact and operational, and you’ll still wind up very dead.
Which is, on the one hand, proof of the power that supernatural force has, but on the other hand, is kind of a cheat.
And speaking of cheats, there’s one big fat one towards the film’s end that stretches the envelope of the audience’s suspension of disbelief to near-breaking point. It’s one of a couple of unfortunate lapses in what could potentially have been a much more substantial film than Ringu, given what Miike was apparently aiming for.

Another flaw is a subplot concerning a television show that manages to broadcast to viewers across Japan, a pivotal set piece in the film’s supernatural goings-on. Given all the build-up towards that particular sequence, as well as the bravura execution of it by Miike, with nice editing touches and masterful pacing, one would think this would lead someplace.
Instead, as soon as the sequence is over, the TV show subplot suddenly ends, truncated, as if in one of Miike’s more ultraviolent moments. We don’t see how this event, broadcast live, affects the general public. No reactions at all to indicate the impact this has on the citizenry.
If we had, I think it would have reinforced the notion of how an evil can permeate society with its malignant influence, a notion already inherent in the idea of a curse being passed on through the cellular network. Sadly, we don’t see that; following that sequence, we immediately return to the very personal tale of Yumi and her struggle with the evil that is calling out through her cell phone.

And, having mentioned Miike’s penchant for ultraviolence, it can be said that Chakushin Ari comes nowhere near the gore and splatter quotient of Koroshiya Ichi (Ichi the Killer). Nor is it as bizarre as Bizita Q (Visitor Q). Nor as disturbing as Odishon (Audition).
It is, in fact, one of the most accessible and mainstream films I’ve seen from Miike, alongside his moving adaptation of Shugoro Yamamoto’s Sabu.
Which is not to say it’s completely “safe.” Chakushin Ari has its fair share of creepy moments, and, despite its occasional lapses, is an effective work that can enter the annals of the on-going renaissance in Japanese horror (sparked by the global success of Nakata’s Ringu) with devilish ease. It’s certainly a far more effective chiller than Masato Harada’s Inugami, or Tsuruta’s Kakashi.

And, as with Nakata’s Honogurai Mizu No Soko Kara (Dark Water), Chakushin Ari also attempts to be something more than just another horror movie. Though where Nakata succeeds, Miike falls just a little bit short.
Chakushin Ari shares another thing with Honogurai Mizu No Soko Kara: the study of the mother-daughter dynamic, though the one displayed in Honogurai Mizu No Soko Kara is decidedly healthier and far more positive than those depicted in Chakushin Ari.
Of course, if oeuvres are anything to go by, Miike’s worldview is significantly more warped than Nakata’s, so this really isn’t a surprise.

Another possible weak spot in Chakushin Ari is its curiously ambiguous ending, which is open to interpretation and debate.
Even the plot twist towards the film’s end—taking a page from Dario Argento’s Sotto Gli Occhi Dell’assassino (Tenebrae), tweaking it, and giving it a supernatural spin—may not be such a twist, as you may see it coming, or at the very least, consider it as a possibility before the big reveal.

Ultimately, Chakushin Ari is a film to watch, if you’re into the Asian horror film scene, or just want a good scare.
Though as far as J-Horror goes, as much as Miike makes a good impression, Nakata’s still got the spectral crown firmly on his head.

Since then…

Miike has gone on to direct a gazillion more films since Chakushin Ari, some (like Zebraman and Yokai Daisenso—The Great Yokai War) more mainstream than others (his rambling, metaphysical samurai movie, Izo).
He also contributed “Box” to pan-Asian horror anthology Saam Gaang Yi (Three… Extremes) and the too-disturbing-for-American-cable “Imprint” to Masters of Horror’s first season. And then there was some good old fashioned Ultraman Max thrown in for good measure, as well as that great cameo in Eli Roth’s Hostel.
Notable in his 2007 output are Kurozu Zero (Crows: Episode Zero) and Sukiyaki Western Django.

Chakushin Ari was also followed up by two sequels, Chakushin Ari 2 and Chakushin Ari Final, neither of which had Miike in the director’s chair; 2 was directed by Renpei Tsukamoto, while Final was helmed by Manabu Asou.
Neither sequel was quite as good as Chakushin Ari.
Also, in 2005, the same year Chakushin Ari 2 hit theatres, a television series of Chakushin Ari invaded Japanese homes, all 10 episodes of which are available on DVD. Haven’t seen those though, so I honestly don’t know if the show was any good.

Looking forward…

Armed with that freaky-a$$ one-sheet, One Missed Call is helmed by French director Eric Valette, and stars Ed Burns, Shannyn Sossamon (last seen in Catacombs, review in Archive), and genre fixture Ray Wise.
I hope they retain that truly disturbing ring tone from the original…

(Chakushin Ari DVD cover art courtesy of amazon.com [Double Disc Edition] and amazon.co.uk [2007 UK edition].)

(The “Looking back…” section above is a slightly altered version of a previously published review entitled “Missed Opportunity.”)

reVIEW (3)
HONOGURAI MIZU NO SOKO KARA (DARK WATER)
[1 of 2]

Hideo Nakata's Ringu opens with an image of the sea, waves moving in its ceaseless, eternal rhythm. His Hitchcockian psychosexual thriller Kaosu (Chaos) has its title card set against a shot of rain. Even his first Hollywood film, The Ring Two, opens with images of water. If opening images are anything to go by, Nakata seems to have a yen for water.
If there is any credence to this notion, then actually having the word in a film's title, and having it as a central image, might just have been inevitable.
Once again adapting material by Koji Suzuki, as he did with Ringu—this time out, the short story “Floating Water”—Nakata opens Honogurai mizu no soko kara with a credit sequence whose backdrop is filthy water, immediately submerging the audience in the medium used by the tale's supernatural menace to spread its sinister influence.

Appropriating as its English-language title the name of the Suzuki collection where “Floating Water” is contained, Dark Water revolves around Yoshimi Matsubara (Hitomi Kuroki), a separated single parent raising a child on her own (as was the scenario in Ringu). This time around, the child is a little girl, Ikuko (Rio Kanno), who finds herself in the middle of a custody battle. And while this domestic crisis is on-going, mother and daughter move into a new apartment, where strange incidents immediately begin to occur, as a ghostly force seems to have found a target in little Ikuko.
What follows is a film with more ambitious aims than Ringu, and one of its triumphs is that Nakata succeeds in hitting the bull's eye dead-on.

Though Yoshimi is just as harried a single mother as Reiko Asakawa was in Ringu, Yoshimi has abandonment issues from her childhood, that she is anxious she not repeat in Ikuko's case. Ultimately, this is a bitter irony, given what Yoshimi is forced to do to resolve the central dilemma of Dark Water. Also, Ikuko is a far more normal child than Ringu's Yoichi, who emanated an unsettling, other-worldly maturity in his demeanor.
With these telling differences, it is clear that Nakata strives to people the story with individuals, to steep the tale in as much reality as possible, before the supernatural slowly seeps into its fabric.
Structure-wise, he even does away with the gambit of the creepy opening set piece, as seen in Ringu. In fact, Dark Water could have been played with the tantalizing possibility that all the strangeness was taking place in Yoshimi's head, a ploy perhaps of her scheming husband to gain custody of Ikuko. This isn't Nakata's tack, however. But given that the story could have been told from this angle, pitting the tension of a natural, rational explanation against a supernatural, irrational one, becomes a testament to the authenticity of the scenario; of its reality.

While in Ringu there was already a strong feminine presence, with Reiko and Sadako (and, to a limited extent, Yamamura), in Dark Water, the masculine presence is nearly non-existent, with only Yoshimi's ex-husband, a helpful lawyer, and a couple of other males playing very minimal roles. As far as Dark Water goes, the feminine is near-ubiquitous, which seems only natural, considering the film's central image of water.
In the Chinese belief system, yin ("shaded") energies are feminine, as opposed to the masculine yang ("sunlit"). Yin is also water and darkness, while yang is fire and light. Thus, yin is the negative part of the equation, while yang is the positive, sadly reinforcing the sexist belief of women being the weaker gender. A proper balance between these two forces is believed to be a prerequisite for the perfect life.
So perhaps it is this imbalance in Yoshimi's life that brings down the misfortune in the first place, but what Nakata ultimately does in Dark Water, consciously or otherwise, is to short-circuit the whole yin/yang balance, proving that a problem can be faced and addressed without the need of a male presence. Yoshimi is able to protect her child, her maternal love giving her the strength to pay the hefty price for Ikuko's safety.

Nakata is also able to present us with one of the hoariest scenarios in horror, the haunted house, and still make the goosebumps rise. And he doesn't even need to rely on outlandish production design, as in Jan De Bont's terrible misfire, The Haunting, to make the setting a character in its own right. All we have here is an apartment building, run-down and gloomy. A cramped, creaky elevator here, a water stain on the ceiling there, a grotty water tank on the rooftop, and presto, instant creepy haunted house.

Another nice touch in Dark Water is that, ultimately, the ghostly presence isn't truly a malignant one: it is only because of its loneliness that it reaches out to the living, unknowing (or perhaps, unmindful) of the harm it is causing in its wake. This isn't some raging spirit who sets off a spiteful curse that claims lives indiscriminately, by pure chance. This is a wraith with very specific needs and desires, paradoxically making it that much more malevolent, even if its motives aren't.
In the process of telling his story, Nakata is able to raise the issue of just how damaging to a child's psyche abandonment can be. Again, ironic given the story's resolution; as in Ringu, the mother is forced to do all she can to protect her child, though safety in Dark Water comes at a far greater cost. Here is an ending that could quite possibly be a far more cruel thorn than Ringu's cold-blooded climax, due to the element of self-sacrifice involved.

It is evident that Nakata intended Dark Water to be a horror movie with substance, and that it is, an urban ghost story whose ultimate influence is far more subtle than the obvious effects of the Ringu Cycle, though no less potent and crucial to the evolution of modern horror cinema.

(The above review began life under the title “... And Not A Drop To Drink (Diving Back into Dark Water).”)

(Honogurai mizu no soko kara DVD cover art courtesy of bloody-disgusting.com; Dark Water collection cover art courtesy of clouded-moon.blogspot.com.)

THE DIRECTOR’S CHAIR (1)

HIDEO NAKATA in
“CATCHING GHOSTS
(Hideo Nakata and the Hollywood Game)”

A good movie from Hollywood is like a ghost: you hear about them, but you hardly (if ever) actually see them.
Hideo Nakata… now he’s a man who knows his ghosts.
I’m sure you know the story.

The cursed videotape. Sadako of the long black hair, whose unquiet spirit lives in a well, who emerges from television sets to literally scare her victims to death.
I’m talking, of course, about Ringu, Hideo Nakata’s chilling adaptation of a Koji Suzuki novel, a movie which single-handedly ignited the Asian horror film scene, paving the way for film-makers from Korea (Kim Ji-woon, Park Ki-hyung), Hong Kong (Kuo-fu Chen, Pou-Soi Cheang), Thailand (the Pang brothers), and Nakata’s homeland, Japan (Norio Tsuruta, Takashi Shimizu), to strut their spectral stuff on the silver screen.
The boom was so resounding, it was heard all the way in Hollywood, which has gone on a feeding frenzy, purchasing English-language remake rights to even the most lame and tepid of the recent entries.
Thus far, there’ve been two Rings (the second brilliant, the first not)*, two Grudges (both ultimately disappointing), a Dark Water (brilliant), and a Pulse (again, brilliant), with more still ‘round the corner: The Eye, One Missed Call, Mirrors (from Korea’s Into The Mirror), and the long-in-development redux of Janghwa, Hongryeon (A Tale of Two Sisters).**
Even Sigaw is being remade as The Echo, with Jesse Bradford (of Bring It On and Swimf@n) in the lead role.

This entire redux frenzy can largely be traced back to Nakata’s door.
With low budgets and simple stories, Nakata is able to infuse the screen with atmosphere and character, two things Hollywood has difficulty grasping. He expertly crafts confidently-paced tales, exploring themes of abandonment and betrayal and love, of the elusive power and nature of the feminine. All this, and he scares the hell out of us too. What more could you ask for?
Directors of the caliber and talent of Walter Salles (who directed the Dark Water remake) and Jonathan Glazer (see below) interested in revisiting his work: surely this must be a strong testament to the integrity and craftsmanship of the originals. Sadly, it’s these same characteristics that evaporate into the rarefied, climate-controlled air of the multiplex when the remake is particularly clumsy and inept.

There is also the inherent problem of the test screening.
The release date for Salles’ Dark Water was bounced around a lot due to the issues raised by unsatisfactory test screenings, which forcibly reshape a film, sometimes even changing its ending to better suit the audience’s tastes. (Famously, films like Fatal Attraction and Pretty In Pink had their endings revised due to this process.)
More and more, a Hollywood film is Art by Committee, if you can still even call it “art” when the final fate of a film is left in the hands of test audiences across America.
Subjected to this process, a film becomes a cold, calculated thing, designed to cater to the least common denominator, engineered to take the particular form of its essential self that would probably rake in the greatest amount of cash. It’s sickening. I’m sure Hideo Nakata didn’t approach Ringu like that.
But such is the beast called Hollywood.

Other Asian directors have tried: Peter Ho-Sun Chan directed The Love Letter (with Kate Capshaw), before returning to Hong Kong and establishing a production company instrumental in the making of Gin Gwai (The Eye), and pan-Asian horror anthology, San geng (Three, where his elegiac “Going Home” is contained), as well as its sequel, Three… Extremes.
Whatever his reasons, Chan walked away from Hollywood.
We can only hope that Nakata, fascinated as he is by water (a recurring image in his films), can expertly navigate Hollywood’s turbulent seas; for his English-language films to ultimately have the same distinctive stamp of his earlier works (and The Ring Two was a fine start).
Perhaps then, on the inside, he can help subvert the establishment, and show Hollywood just how to catch those ghosts.

Parting shot: Since The Ring Two, Nakata’s name was floated in connection to the remakes of The Eye (ultimately landing in the directorial hands of David Moreau and Xavier Palud) and The Entity (the based-on-a-true story film of a woman who is repeatedly raped by an invisible presence), as well as an adaptation of Japanese suspense novel Out.
While things went back and forth on those projects, Nakata directed Kaidan back in Japan, and is currently at work on the Death Note prequel, L (much to my consternation; see Afterthoughts (5): Archive April 2007).
Recently, he’s been reported to have reunited with Ringu producer—as well as his co-writer on the script for Honogurai mizu no soko kara (Dark Water)—Taka Ichise, to tackle Inhuman, a horror movie pitch made by Eric Heisserer, loosely based on a Japanese murder case.

* Nakata brought to the Dreamworks sequel the slow, measured tread and creep so blatantly absent from Gore Verbinski’s slick The Ring, which was crippled even further by an unnecessarily busy script by Ehren Krueger.

** And though not a horror movie the way the others are, Nakata’s Kaosu (Chaos), a film with Hitchcock’s shadow long and dark over it, with its twists and turns and reversals, was once also being considered for the remake treatment by Jonathan Glazer (Sexy Beast, Birth).

(The above article is a revised version of a piece previously published under the same title.)

(Image courtesy of revistafantastique.com.)