Don't Check Your Messages

What is the significance of the demon ghost in your life? 2003's One Missed Call (着信アリ) made an effort to set itself apart from the flourishing genre of Japanese horror films about ghosts in machines by making a psychological connexion between its heroine and the threat menacing her. Critics saw it as just another run of the mill "J-Horror" show but I kind of liked it.

The concept in this one is that people get voice mails mails from themselves in future, moments before their deaths. You hear two or three words in the message and then a scream. It works nicely because, you might think, okay, I'll just make a point of not saying that sentence. But the victim always says it without thinking, and it's always plausible. It creates a wonderfully dreadful sense of inescapable fate.

The last one is especially good. The protagonist, Yumi (Ko Shibasaki), just hears herself saying, "Doshite?"--"Why?" Okay, now she just has to remember to never ask why. She's established as having a history of being abused and this matches well with an abusive relationship of the kind where an abuser might be twice as enraged by his or her victim asking that very question--"Why?"

Yumi's personal experiences seem to help her get some insight into what's happening. But then they also mislead her. She's a psychology student at university and this has given her preconceptions of what an abusive relationship looks like. Just when it seems like everything's wrapped up with a nice little bow, we're reminded of a whole bunch of clues the characters have forgotten about in arriving at a tidy diagnosis.

Director Takashi Miike does a lot of nice things with pacing and tone. I love how he favours letting the audience imagine things over showing a special effect or bit of gore. He uses reaction shots a lot, lingering on an actor's shocked face rather than the shocking thing they're seeing. In one scene, we're even given a reaction shot of a reaction. When Yumi sees one victim dragged into an elevator shaft, she falls down, and we see the back of her head. At that moment, a few guys get off the elevator and stop talking when they see her. We see their faces, not hers. I suppose it could've been a tactic to get around a weak performance but I didn't think Shibasaski was that bad.

One Missed Call is available on Shudder.

Twitter Sonnet #1581

The title waits on paper warped in rain.
The spiky turtle taunts the napless troll.
The tiny text can aging stereos explain.
You must deposit disks beneath the bowl.
The wasted weave was signed in error ink.
Beneath the hole, a waiting wight was kept.
The forest hides a dead but vital link.
In dappled light the knight of trees has slept.
Apparent Irish poems embrace the young.
Confusing phones await the hidden starved.
A can of air replaced a piping lung.
In red and white the clinic's halls were carved.
Familiar birds would carry years to space.
Behind a dream there watched a bitter face.