3 out of 5

Director: Takashi Miike

There’s nothing new under the sun in Miike’s “One Missed Call,” but, oddly, he brings the same sense of patience and weight to this typical Japanese-revenge-ghost film that he did to his classic “Audition.” OMC’s plot should be mostly predictable to any genre fan – a ghost starts killing people in gruesome fashion with something strange tying all the deaths together. Soon the main characters discover the link between the victims, and it’s something sort of rude, like all the contacts from the first victim’s phone. Can the ghost be stopped? Probably, and in the last few minutes before the main character is intended to die, a plan will be executed that should stop the ghost. But aw dang we didn’t figure out the REAL cause and so the ghost comes back in the last few minutes. Spoiler alert? OMC extends events with some interesting whodunnit in the last few minutes, and admittedly the reason for the revenge to begin is a spin on what we normally see. But overall, the plot left to its own devices is bereft of anything truly new to the long-haired girl corner of J-horror. Step in visualist Miike. Followers of Miike know that his style varies from focused to playful to silly depending on his approach to the film. I was expecting some type of adult-oriented Zebraman type zeal here, but to the benefit of the movie, Miike takes it pretty seriously, letting events play out very quietly and slowly with his characteristic push into surreal that elevates things enough to where you want to keep watching. It doesn’t save it overall, upon deeper analysis, but it’s a fascinating take on the typical by an atypical director and doesn’t promote the eye-rolls that most films in this genre inevitably do.