The Awful Japanese Horror Remake With A 0% Score On Rotten Tomatoes

Popular perception of Japanese horror, or J-horror, might be limited to "Ringu" and "Ju-on: The Grudge," but there's more to this thematically rich genre. The enduring image of Sadako crawling out of a television screen is preceded by decades worth of macabre folk tales, supernatural myths, and horror aspects drawn from traditional Kabuki theater. One of the earliest examples of J-horror is Kaneto Shindo's 1964 film "Onibaba," a tale of dread and betrayal set against the backdrop of civil war. At other times, these horror stories dive into deeply surreal waters, such as Nobuhiko Obayashi's "Hausu" aka "House," which has gained cult status over the years due to its inventive imagery.

Fast forward to a post-"Ringu" world, Takashi Miike made "One Missed Call," which features a straightforward horror plot revolving around strange cell phone messages. For those unfamiliar with Miike's brand of filmmaking, the "Audition" and "Ichi the Killer" director subverts expectations by bringing a DIY ethos to everything he makes. His approach to a conventional J-horror plot in "One Missed Call" was no different, where he takes time-tested tropes and tugs them toward extreme thematic eccentricities. While a hit-or-miss approach from a commercial standpoint, it works as a narrative challenging horror conventions, with the director's singular vision framing every frightening notion.

Having said that, this 2003 J-horror is still one of Miike's weakest works, as it merely repackages a curse myth into something mildly intriguing. However, nothing will prepare you for the film's 2008 remake — also titled "One Missed Call" — which is so horrendously empty that it sports a shameful 0% on Rotten Tomatoes.

Eric Valette's "One Missed Call" preserves the basic premise of Miike's original (which is based on the novel "Chakushin Ari"), in which a curse gets passed around, leading to several deaths. The mode of transmission is a phone call or voicemail from one's future self, stating the subject's time of death along with an eerie message. This is an overdone trope for sure, especially after the 2002 Hollywood remake of "Ringu" executed it to great effect, popularizing a genuinely chilling interpretation of a contagious curse passed on through electronic devices.

Although this altered premise should have worked (it definitely worked for Miike), Valette's remake lacks the originality required to revisit stale genre tropes from a fresh perspective. The fact that none of the performances manage to distract you from this glaring limitation certainly does not help matters. For instance, Shannyn Sossamon's Beth undergoes absolute hell within the span of a few weeks, with half of her friends dead due to the voicemail curse. But Beth appears unmoved even when the film wants us to think she's spooked or terrified and does not react when matters keep getting out of hand. Dull performances aside, any attempt at social commentary — such as our overreliance on phones, which often act as a proxy for identity — falls flat without any depth or nuance to ground it.

Sure, this might not be the worst horror film ever made, but its emptiness feels somewhat jarring, especially when contrasted against Miike's spirited version. It's one thing for a film to be boring; it's another to shamelessly rip-off better, greater genre titles (like Kiyoshi Kurosawa's haunting techno-horror "Pulse") and still fail to entertain.