Hancock

Wanted

The Love Guru

Get Smart

The Incredible Hulk

You Don't Mess with the Zohan

Sex and the City

Savage Grace

Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull

Surfwise

What Happens in Vegas

Iron Man

Son of Rambow

Beth (Shannyn Sossamon) fends off an unseen killer.

In this supernatural thriller, Southern university grad student Leanne (Azura Skye) receives a panicked cell phone voice message from herself time-stamped three days in the future, and originating from the phone of a recently deceased friend. Three days hence, at the precise time of the mysterious message, Leanne perishes in a freak, hallucinogenic accident involving a commuter train, a hard candy and creepy nursery rhyme ring tone (written by Dave Stewart). Her surviving housemates Beth and Taylor (Shannyn Sossamon and Ana Claudia Talancón) soon surmise that Leanne was the most recent in a chain of unexplained deaths linked by post-mortem voicemails, and conclude their phones are likely to be rung up next. The women enlist the aid of detective Jack Andrews (Edward Burns) to solve the mystery and break this digital daisy chain of murder before their numbers are up.

Det. Adams (Edward Burns) and Beth activate some supernatural caller ID.

One Missed Call -- a (mostly) faithful remake of the 2004 Japanese horror film Chakushin ari (You've Got a Call) -- is a poor country cousin to 2002's The Ring, another Japanese remake in which the unfortunate viewers of a videocassette bite the bullet within a week of viewing it. Here, the postgraduate characters and their relationships are so weakly defined that there's little emotional investment in their fates, and therefore minimal suspense. The ultimate explanation for the paranormal murder spree is armchair psychology so pat that you see it coming from a mile away, ergo it also falls short as a mystery. Burns is way out of his league in this modest production, while Sossamon, the bewitching catalyst of Rules of Attraction and TV's Dirt, gets no room to ignite and instead succumbs to forgettable horror movie trappings. What little appeal One Missed Call has is its series of moderately inventive murders involving such conduits of death as a koi pond and a rebar missile, but they pale in comparison to the giddy malice of the Final Destination series. Save your minutes; don't take this call.

by Rob. Walton

photos: Guy D'Alema/Courtesy of Warner Bros. Pictures