Pulp-Meister Takashi Miike plündert ein wenig unverfroren in der Blockbuster-Ecke asiatischer Horrorwerke à la RING und PHONE, und schafft es dabei dem altbewährten Stoff den ganz speziellen Miike-Verwesungstouch ein zu hauchen. Instrument der Angst ist hierbei das allseits beliebte Mobiltelefon.

Eine Schulclique, darunter die schüchterne Yumi (die bereits in BATTLE ROYALE als sadistische Bitch brillierte), wird von unheimlichen Anrufen gequält. Todeswarnungen, die sich auf die Sekunde genau 72 Stunden später mit unentrinnbarer Konsequenz bewahrheiten. Die jungen Leute kratzen bald einer nach dem anderen ab. Während Natsumi, Yumis beste Freundin, schließlich verzweifelt in eine abgeschrammelte Realityshow flüchtet, die ihren vorhergesagten Tod mittels Teufelsaustreiber verhindern soll, begibt sich Yumi auf die Suche nach dem Ursprung des Spuks...

An diesem Punkt dreht die Story plötzlich in eine neue Richtung. Miike verlässt die Dramaturgie des 08/15 Suspensers und beginnt Detail verliebt und wild mit seinem Horrorsujet herum zu spielen; der klassische 10-Minuten Showdown steigert sich auf eine grandiose ungestüme Dreiviertelstunde.

"I don't want to sound boastful but this really is a scary film. I was frightened during the making of it, so it must be the real deal." Takashi Miike

"Random people receive calls from themselves three days in the future, and In his first pic since Audition that doesn't look as if it was put together during a spare weekend, Nipponese pulpmeister Takashi Miike mines the Asian psychothriller vein to fine effect in One Missed Call.

Blatantly hitching a ride on the Japanese Ring and South Korean Phone, with copious refs to Dark Water, film combines scares and chuckles with good production values.

Shibasaki, who played the sadistic bitch-on-wheels in Battle Royale, here plays the nice-but-disturbed Yumi Nakamura, who has some kind of phobia linked with peepholes. At a restaurant, her friend, Yoko, gets a call with a strange ringing tone. The cell phone display tells Yoko the call came from her own number, dated three days hence; it contains just a spooky scream. Exactly 72 hours later, Yoko gets the same call and plunges off a railway bridge.

Yumi finds out from some schoolgirls that one of their group also died the same way, and that the deadly call is said to come from "a woman who died, full of hate." When another friend, Kenji, is sucked into an elevator shaft, and one more, Natsumi (Kazue Fukiishi), gets the same advance call, Yumi starts to be concerned. It seems the dead woman's spirit transfers itself from victim to victim through their cells' phonebooks.

To this point, film has largely played as a straight-arrow psychothriller, with only the occasional hint -- one scene where Yoko's severed arm punches out a text message on her cell -- of Miike's usual extreme playfulness. But when the panicked Natsumi agrees to go on a trashy TV show that will be broadcast at the exact time of her flagged death, the movie becomes a much tastier blend of shocks, satire and suspense.

Miike juggles the Asian psychothriller portfolio (elevators, clock hands, vengeful ghosts, buried family traumas) with gleeful skill. Visual f/x are fine -- especially inventive in Natsumi's death. Audience responded with several genuine cries of shock, rare nowadays." Variety