I Watched the Lowest Rated Horror Movie so You Don’t Have To

Lurye Baxa, Arts and Entertainment Editor

I spent $3 on this movie. It was not worth it. 

“One Missed Call” was released in 2008 and directed by Eric Valette. And, no, you don’t know his name because all his movies suck. It is a remake of a Japanese horror movie from 2003. Remakes are never good, so I didn’t go into this movie with high hopes. 

“One Missed Call” was given a Rotten Tomatoes score of a whopping 0%.  

The movie begins with a fire. A little girl is trapped inside and then suddenly she’s outside. And then it cuts to a college student on the phone with one of her friends. She’s talking about how she has been seeing things and got a phone call from the future with her own voice on it. 

After she hung up, she went over to walk around her pond. She was suddenly pulled into the pond and drowned. And so was her cat. 

Now, there is a rule for horror movies. You don’t kill the animals unless it’s “Halloween,” a Stephen King film or “Cujo.” “One Missed Call” already broke this rule. 

Two more deaths occur by the 25-minute mark. Each one is prefaced by a voicemail from the last person who died with a timestamp from the future and their own voices. 

I’ll be honest, explaining this movie is kind of difficult. Not because it’s convoluted or hard to understand, but just because it’s not exactly explained throughout the movie. It’s mostly bad acting and weird hallucinations. 

The storyline gets a little bit better once you reach the halfway mark. The main character, Beth, is somehow just allowed to follow a detective, Jack, to crime scenes, but other than that it makes a little more sense. 

They’re starting to get into the reasons for what is happening. They find out about the little girl who was trapped in the fire at the very beginning of the movie and learn that she was an abuse victim, along with her sister.  

However, before they can get any more information, there is another death. This one comes with a very cheesy fake exorcism. And then Beth gets the ghost call.  

Jack and Beth do some more investigating, but Beth is a little hesitant since she is supposed to die the next day. 

They learn that the hard candy that has been found with each body was actually a favorite of the little girl’s sister. But that’s literally all they learn before it reaches Beth’s time of death. And she doesn’t die. 

At the same time, Jack gets a voicemail on his work phone and finds out that he is the next to die. Because of this, Beth and Jack work even harder to find answers. 

They learn, literally right before Jack gets stabbed in the eye, that the mother wasn’t the abuser. It was the little girl’s sister. The ghost of the mother is grateful and decides to finally pass on, or something like that. It’s weird. 

The movie ends with Jack’s phone dialing the next victim and Beth staring dramatically into the camera. 

Okay, so this movie is just a mess. The acting is atrocious. There is no emotion in any of the lines and the characters barely react when their friends die. I don’t know if it’s the writing or just bad acting, but it’s bad. 

Speaking of the writing, this movie barely makes any sense. There is barely any explanation for what’s going on and it jumps from place to place with no warning. 

The only good part about this movie is the hallucinations and the special effects. Some of the deaths are random or don’t really make sense, but they at least look cool. The editing is decent as well. But they aren’t enough to make this a good movie. 

However, I don’t really know how this movie is considered the worst one of all time. There are worse horror movies. But I’m not a professional movie reviewer, so maybe I don’t know.  

There are bad horror movies that are still good and then there are just plain horrible horror movies. “One Missed Call” is just plain horrible. Don’t waste the hour and 30 minutes to watch it. You will regret it.