Recently, everyone has been raving about horror movies that make us bite our nails and fall off our seats with anticipation and seldom times fear too because, let’s admit it, the spot hasn’t been hit by a horror movie for a while now. But there are some classics that no one can quite let go of, that had our interests piqued and chime ringtones set.
That’s right, almost there, this is the movie where the individual gets a call from their future selves about their time of death, and the phone rings with a distinctive chime. One we had as our ringtone in the early 2000s, let’s bring back those simpler times as we discuss this iconic movie that made chills run down our spines when we were younger.
One Missed Call is a movie that is based on a Japanese movie of the same name that came out in 2003 and was directed by Takashi Miike, and this movie is said to be an international production of the United States, Japan, and the United Kingdom. This English movie is directed by Eric Valletta. There are some really good actors in this movie, like stars Shannyn Sossamon, Ana Claudia Talancón, Azura Skye, Edward Burn, and Ray Wise.
Shannyn played the role of the main protagonist in the movie, Beth Raymond. She is portrayed as a Psychology student studying in college along with her friends, who are starting to fall dead, one by one. There is Jack Andrews, a police officer played by Edward Burns, who helps Beth find out who is doing all of this and how did it start in the first place.
These movie stars earned great achievements further on in their lives and acted in various movies, though, for One Missed Call, there were a lot of critics who negatively criticized the actors and directors. Rotten Tomatoes is going on even to give it a 0% rating, and lots of critics call it the worst recreation of the Japanese movie. In 2008, One Missed Call was released at different timings in different countries, as early as January 4th in the United States and as late as belated as July 19th in Japan. It was released in movie theatres at that time and is currently not available on any major streaming platforms.
Plot Line of One Missed Call Explained
The plotline of the movie revolves around some college students who receive calls from their future selves, leaving them a terrifying message of how they are about to be dead in a few hours or days, with specific times that this will happen. And it does happen. They die. But now, the survivors must do something to escape the situation and save their lives before whoever is doing this comes and gets them. The movie starts with a clinician trying to rescue a young girl from the fire that was somehow set ablaze and is bringing down the complete building of Saint Luke’s Hospital.
They try to ask her about her parents but fail to do so. Next, we see a girl drowning with her cat. It is a disturbing scene, but wait a second, DID SOMEONE PUSH THEM?! We come to know that the girl was Shelley, whose killing we see, the first victim of the force for now. Next, the screen shows two girls discussing what could have happened to Shelley, or whether or not she could commit suicide and her eccentric actions before the day that she dies. Soon after that, one of the girls, Leann, receives a phone call, but that is not her caller’s tune.
Strangely enough, it is a call from Shelley, who died just a day ago. Leann is terrified but picks up the call only to hear her own voice from the other end telling her that she is about to die at 10:17 pm on June 12th. This had to be some sick joke, but Leann was sure it was her voice. She tells the other girl Beth about this all of this. The day after, Leann is having hallucinations, seeing things that aren’t present, lots of millipedes, and a mother and baby who aren’t there, apparently. She calls Beth again to tell her about all of this.
Beth rushes to where Leann is, but it’s too late. She is dead, hit by a train, obviously an accident, right? After this, Jack, Leann’s boyfriend, dies receiving a similar voicemail, and police officer Andrew’s sister had the same fate just two days before this. With things in complete chaos and no answers to the questions of what happened and how did their loved ones die in such mysterious circumstances? Andrew and Beth try to figure out what is going on, while one of Beth’s friends, Taylor, thinks she is next. Sadly enough, she is. Yet another death.
Soon, Andrews and Beth discover that the calls first started coming from the phone of a geriatric nurse, Marie, whose elder daughter. After looking more into Marie’s life, they become aware that Marie had two daughters. Ellie, her older daughter, had died of an asthma attack and had some old scars on her body, which Marie was being investigated for.
While her younger daughter was in foster care now, learning this, they thought that Marie might be the one behind all of this. There are several theories that the police officer and the graduate student come up with, but to no avail, and there are seemingly no answers or at least no right answers that they can find.
Next, we see that Beth, too, receives a voicemail. Meaning she is next. The tension is only rising, but surprisingly she is saved by the spirit of Marie, making them think that maybe Marie is not the villain after all. Things are only getting wilder, and Andrews decides he needs to find answers and decides to visit Lauren, Marie’s younger daughter’s foster home. He goes to find a spy camera installed in a teddy bear at her house, which is recording all that went down between Marie and her two daughters, Ellie and Lauren.
Andrew rushes to go on and tell Beth about this, but it is too late. He has received a new voice mail that says he is about to be killed in a few seconds. Beth is just about to be killed once again too, but Marie saves her for the second time and whispers, “Forgive me,” capturing the killer and binding it to Jack’s phone. Jack has fallen prey to the killer, though, and can be found lying dead in his office as his phone dials another number that will be the next victim. There is also a candy that falls out of his mouth.
The Ending to the Movie Explained
Having seen the complete plotline of the movie and the ending could not be understood without taking potential clues from the movie and the deaths that occur in it because without connecting the dots, there are just too many questions. The story goes back to Marie and her two daughters. Ellie, the elder daughter, always had certain aggressive tendencies.
She was always using a knife as a means of hurting Lauren, her sister. She would use a knife to hurt Lauren and then give her a red candy to say maybe sorry for doing so. Marie was aware that something was wrong but could not understand what, so she decided to put up a camera in Lauren’s teddy bear that she always had with her.
The truth came out when she saw Ellie hurting Lauren with a knife. Marie immediately went to save her daughter and, so as to keep Ellie away, shut her in a room and rushed Lauren to the hospital. But Ellie was so scared after being discovered by her mother. The anxiety of it all got so much that she had a severe asthma attack, and her inhaler wasn’t working either.
She reached on to call her mother but passed away before she could do so. This can be why things would turn out the way they did, and it can be assumed that when Ellie was taken to the hospital after being discovered dead by her mother, while at the hospital Ellie’s spirit might have taken over and decided to kill Marie by setting the hospital ablaze and she was even successful doing so. But Lauren was spared the fate as she was saved by a paramedic.
The last thing Ellie tried to do was call her mother to save her and could have used that very instrument to tell people about their approaching deaths, the distinct chime that could be heard whenever a call from the future came is described to be a lullaby that a mother sings to her child. Ellie was doing all of this because she died before her psychopathic tendencies completely developed, and she wanted to murder people, innocent people, gruesomely, if I must say.
This could be the reason that Marie was asking Beth to forgive her because it was her child causing all of this, going on a murder rampage. But this does not stop, as we see Jack’s phone being taken over by Ellie and luring in other victims through his contacts list. Shelley and Jack’s sister worked at the same hospital where Ellie apparently was taken to, Saint Luke’s, which was shown in the first movie scene.
One Missed Call was a completely psychopathic movie, where a supernatural spirit decided that she had not had enough of hurting people and used mobile as a means to reach people and cause them to harm while leaving them candy in the end as a means of saying sorry for giving them the most painful death possible. The spirit of Ellie would use the phone book of the deceased person’s mobile and call others using it to kill them. Another reason why mobiles are a potential danger, isn’t it?
Reviews of People and Will There Be a Sequel?
There are a lot of critics who have bashed this movie, giving it extremely hard criticisms and saying that this was the worst movie created during that time, but the audience then seemed to like it quite a bit, seeing how the audience and even us knew about the tune of the ringtone! The Internet was definitely a thing back then, but not so much as it is now to be able to make things go ‘viral,’ so a generation of people knowing about it says much more about it than potential critics have.
We might not like it as much now, but the plotline and as it goes, it is definitely interesting to see the way things turn out. The scary effects are compared to Final Destination and The Ring a lot of the time because they kind of share the same idea of death being followed by a shared message or just the basic gruesomeness of it all.
The graphics and even the actors and their chemistry together were under a lot of criticism from people, from the feelings passing between the two protagonists feeling forced to the director not caring about or focusing on how painfully gruesome the killings were but on how the protagonists saw it, a lot of harsh words have been thrown at production and cast.
While on the counterpart, the Japanese movie that this was a remake of made a lot of money and fame even in the foreign market, it also went on to come up with two more versions of the movie and even a TV series of the same. The names of the Japanese movies are, One Missed Call, One Missed Call 2, and One Missed Call: Final.
The names of the Japanese movies are, One Missed Call, One Missed Call 2, and One Missed Call: Final. The English version of the movie is also compared a lot of the time to its Japanese version and is said to be better than what they saw in the English version. What can be said, though, is it is worth a shot.
Many people out there do like the movie and would recommend it to others, the problem is the comparison that is being done, and that is not the ‘worst’ movie out there as it is labeled to be. It is a movie that tried hard and couldn’t reach the spot, but it has people’s emotions attached to it, their childhoods even, and is a blast from the past that we love so much. So shower some love on it too!
Keep safe, and by the way, do not pick up that call you are receiving now—weird ringtone.
