One Missed Call (2004 film)

One Missed Call
Directed by	Takashi Miike
Produced by	Yoichi Arishige Fumio Inoue Naoki Sato
Written by	Yasushi Akimoto Minako Daira
Starring	Kou Shibasaki Shin'ichi Tsutsumi Kazue Fukiishi Anna Nagata Atsushi Ida Mariko Tsutsui Kumiko Imai Keiko Tomita Renji Ishibashi
Cinematography	Hideo Yamamoto
Editing by	Yasushi Shimamura
Studio	Kadokawa-Daiei
Distributed by	Toho
Release date(s)	January 17, 2003 (2003-01-17)
Running time	112 minutes
Country	Japan
Language	Japanese

One Missed Call (着信アリ, Chakushin ari^?) is a 2003 Japanese horror film directed by Takashi Miike.

Plot

During an evening get-together with friends, Okazaki Yoko's (Yoko Okazaki) cell phone suddenly rings in an eerie, unusual tone. Not recognizing the tone, Yoko doesn't pick up soon enough and the call goes into "voice mail" (chakushin). When she sees that the call/message was from her own phone number and dated two days into the future, both she and her friend Nakamura Yumi (Yumi Nakamura) listen intently to the message. What they hear is the voice of Yoko in casual chit-chat, followed by a horrendous scream and then dead silence.

The two girls attempt to laugh the message off and even share the story with their friends, who are just as clueless as them. She tells her friends that she received the call to her cell phone on Apr 16 at 11:04 p.m. Her cell phone indicated that the message was from Apr 18 at 11:04 p.m. At exactly 11:04 p.m. on April 18, Yumi receives a call from Yoko. During that call, Yoko goes through the very same chit-chat as was on her previous voice mail. As Yumi suddenly realizes what might happen next, she hears Yoko shriek into the phone.

Yoko is violently thrown by an invisible force through a chain link fence and onto a speeding commuter train below. Then, as Yoko's severed arm still holds the phone, it begins to dial a phone number.

Kawai Kenji's (Kenji Kawai) phone is next to receive a call and, like Yoko, misses it. He receives a voice message with himself saying some bad words and then a loud scream, Yumi is with him and hears it too. Kenji saw a friend that he had to meet with and he said the same words of the message and then the doors of the elevator opened, but he didn't look and he is pushed down into the shaft and vanishes with the same screams of the message. He falls to his death at the bottom of the elevator and he vomits a red candy. His phone is still working on its own looking for another victim.

Konichi Natsumi (Natsumi Konichi) is at Yumi's house and her phone rings with a strange video of her and a body behind her. She then goes to a TV program for an exorcism. Yumi meets Hirochi Yamashita and with the help of him they go to the TV program. The exorcism is a complete disaster and the video of Natsumi becomes real. Yumi and Yamashita came to save Natsumi, but when they get to Natsumi her right hand turns to the back, her complete arm turns to the back of her neck and turns until her head falls off. Her decapitated body still walks and eventually falls. When it does a red candy comes out of her mouth that stops at Yumi's feet and the chilling ring tone sounds on Yumi's phone.

Yumi and Yamashita investigate the phone calls in an old hospital and they find a dead body of a woman with a phone that comes to life. The body is Marie, the mother of Mimiko and Nanako, who they believe to be the killer ghost. Yumi apologizes to Marie, with Marie believing Yumi is her daughter. In Yumi's apartment she is haunted by Mimiko and Yamashita comes to save her, but Yumi stabs Yamashita in the stomach. As Yamashita collapses onto the floor he sees that instead of Yumi's reflection in nearby mirror, it's Mimiko, who turns to look at him, indicating that Mimiko has possessed Yumi. The vision of Mimiko says that she'll take him to the hospital, much as she did for her sister while she was alive. Later, Yamashita wakes up in the hospital with Yumi in the room with a knife hiding behind her back. It turns out that Mimiko, not Marie, was abusing Nanako all along. She leans forward and gives him the same kind of red candy that appeared with all of the victims, then waits. When Yamashita seems to enjoy the candy, Yumi smiles, and the spirit of Mimiko has obviously found another person to "take care of" as she did with her little sister. The film ends with the song Ikutsuka No Sora by Kou Shibasaki.

Cast

• Kou Shibasaki as Yumi Nakamura
• Shinichi Tsutsumi as Hiroshi Yamashita
• Kazue Fukiishi as Natsumi Konishi
• Anna Nagata as Yoko Okazaki
• Atsushi Ida as Kenji Kawai
• Kanna Ito as Rina
• Mariko Tsutsui as Marie Mizunuma
• Azusa as Ritsuko Yamashita
• Karen Oshima as Mimiko Mizunuma
• Renji Ishibashi as Detective

Sequels and remakes

• One Missed Call 2 sequel was created with an enveloping curse, so that two curses on cellphones are played out.
• One Missed Call: Final is, according to the title, the end to the Chakushin Ari mythos.
• Warner Bros. remade the film into an American version titled One Missed Call.
• One Missed Call, also known as Chakushin Ari - the TV series, is a 2005 ten episode Japanese television drama that followed the films. It was released in a five-box set in Japan without subtitles, and also in Malaysia, in an English-subtitled three-DVD set, under the title Ghost Ring.

Alternative versions

The film has an alternate ending where after Yumi spits the candy into Yamashita's mouth, it cuts to Tendo, the exorcist, wearing casts on his arms and legs. He gets a missed call on his cell phone, but unlike the other victims, his message is from a few seconds in the future and not three days. He is then killed in a humorous fashion when a metal basin falls on his head.

External links

• One Missed Call at the Internet Movie Database
• One Missed Call at AllRovi
• One Missed Call at Metacritic
• (Japanese) One Missed Call at the Japanese Movie Database