Last night we sat down to watch "One Missed Call" by Japanese director Takashi Miike, one of my favorite directors.  I was excited because it was a free On Demand movie through our digital cable.  What I didn't know was that it was dubbed, and not in English either.  After watching the first 10 seconds of the movie, I determined it was dubbed in Valley Girl.

A quick call to our local video store confirmed that they had a subtitled version in stock.  Whew. One of the best parts of watching a creepy Japanese horror film is listening to it in Japanese (moshi moshi - hi!).

Anyway, our late night run to the video store was worth it.  "One Missed Call" is scary, creepy, and has awesome effects.  By awesome effects, I don't mean lots of overt CG, I mean tastefully used, appropriate effects that don't interfere with the story or characters.

This movie has one of the best, grossest corpses in it.  As the corpse is walking around and attacking people, pieces of skin kinda slide off.  It seemed realistic and totally gross.  I loved it.

The story is good, too.  Right away we found holes in the premise, but they were immediately addressed in the movie.  There is nothing you can do if you get THE CALL.

And, as always, Takashi Miike delivered beautiful and stunning movie.  Every shot is carefully composed and the set design is amazing.  I just love the energy in his films.

[photo taken 8-14-2002 in New York City]