| Horror sequels, the very
notion tends to get one prepared for either
retreads of the previous film's plot or for
the movie to take the series in a bizarre,
often illogical, direction. In this regard,
One Missed Call 2, which follows
in the footsteps of the cursed mobile
phone ring tone plot established from
the first, does little to break the stereotype.
In fact, it tends to commit both criticisms.
While Takashi Miike's film that started the
series was entertaining fluff in an over popularized
Japanese horror genre, this movie is just
there. Like sequels in the genre before it,
One Missed Call 2 is an entirely
unneeded film that rewrites the mythos established
by the first while also taking the story in
a strange direction that doesn’t make
a great deal of sense. The actors, and the
characters that they inhibit, are also pretty
weak across the board, and while the production
values on this film are fairly high for the
genre they do little to elevate the movie
as a whole.
The plot starts roughly one
year after the events that occurred in the
first film. Apparently, Yumie Nakamura killed
Hiroshi Yamashita about a year ago before
vanishing, while the police continue to try
and discover exactly what took place. In the
meantime, more deaths have started to occur,
each following the person receiving a cell
phone call with the same ring tone from a
year ago, while hearing himself or herself
in the future just before they die. The cases
differ in one way, though: they lack Mimiko’s
trademark candy that was placed in the victim’s
mouth. The police investigate more into the
girl’s history, which leads them to
visit Taiwan to locate the girl's stepfather.
The chase ends up being futile, though, as
the man is found dead, killed with a cell
phone clutched between his hands. However,
it’s soon revealed that these new victims
have something in common: coal dust lining
each of their stomachs. It's also learned
that Mimiko’s stepfather had died years
ago before she had. This leads to the discovery
that Mimiko was not the originator of this
trend in murders, as the police look to Taiwan
to uncover the truth.
Given the basic plot, I assume
it’s not hard to see how this movie
could easily go about rewriting events from
the first. To the second film’s credit,
at least the start is promising, with an eerie
rain stricken school that Rika, Mimiko’s
younger sister, is attending before the movie
goes to establish the main characters. Unfortunately,
the quality of the story quickly dips beyond
this point, while the opening stuff with Rika
ends up being completely unimportant; in fact,
it feels like it was slapped on only to try
and connect this movie just a little more
with its predecessor. It’s in this regard
that the movie really goes astray, as director
Renpei Tsukamoto and writer Miwako Daira seem
to want to produce their own unique horror
movie yet have to do so through the confines
of a sequel to an already existing franchise.
The ending result is that there are two “killers”
running around in this movie, both using the
cell phone “gimmick” from the
first. The movie stresses that this newer
character, Li Li, was the one who turned Mimiko
into the specter type being that people are
familiar with, but actually does very little
to convincingly connect the events. This creates
for a sort of awkward union, as both characters
are huge threats to the protagonists yet they
seem like seperate plots and never collide
in any significant way. How could this have
been improved? Well personally I would have
enjoyed a confrontation sequence between the
two little girls, butcher knives vs. Li Li’s
giant needles, but that would probably have
had many rolling their eyes. In reality the
story probably would have been better had
it simply focused just on the new girl Li
Li, or had not brought her up at all and returned
to exploring the exploits of Mimiko. In fact,
I would imagine that many people were hoping
for the latter.
This second movie is setup where
the viewer is not meant to think too hard about
the proceeding events and how they figure in with
the story from the first film. Otherwise one would
be able to point out a wealth of plot holes established
by this film; however, the movie is contradictory
in this regard as One Missed Call 2’s
ending won’t make a lick of sense unless
one dissects the plots of both fairly thoroughly.
In doing so, there are a couple of things that
the viewer is going to have to simply ignore in
order for everything to fit. First off, one will
have to disregard the fact that there was actually
a back-story to the ring tone used in the series,
where it was taken from a doll that Mimiko’s
sister carried around of a popular contemporary
kids show. This is on account of it clashing with
the idea that Li Li was the original killer as
she would have been using the tune long before
meeting Mimiko, or even likely before the show
that it came from was created. Second off, and
probably the hardest for most to stomach, one
is also going to have to ignore the fact that
the viewer actually saw how Mimiko died in the
first movie, through an asthma attack after her
mother left with the injured Rika. This is because,
according to this film, her death was actually
from a run-in with Li Li.
Now, those wanting to avoid
spoilers from the ending should turn back
at this point, as one can’t really review
the movie without attempting to dissect this
very confusing sequence. Keeping the above
things in mind, one should recall that it
was shown near the end of the first film that
Mimiko had the ability to possess the bodies
of her victims, which she did with Yumi. For
this film she attempts the trick again, this
time killing Kyoko and taking over her body.
Of course this raises a couple of problems,
like that her corpse is apparently still in
the mine even though Mimiko is supposed to
be running around with it, which was done
simply so the police could have the dramatic
line about “do you know both of the
bodies?” to Kyoko. Ignoring this, though,
it would appear that Takako has been doing
Mimiko’s bidding for the later part
of the movie, but was hallucinating so that
she only saw what she wanted to, like comforting
Yuting when she was in fact killing him. One
would assume that Mimiko also did the same
thing to Motomiya before he died, which explains
how she got a call from the detective late
in the movie, even though he was already dead
at that point. The final moments of the film
are then Takako discovering all of this, seeing
the videotape of Yuting being killed with
her holding the knife and getting the call
that Motomiya was, in fact, dead.
To move away from the story a little,
although not to brighter aspects of the film,
the acting in the movie is also fairly horrendous
from start to finish. In fact, the only halfway
decent performance in the film is from Renji
Ishibashi as detective Motomiya, a holdover
character from the first movie, whose onscreen
time is also minimal. The rest of the cast,
although often quite attractive, is much less
adequate. The two leads, Mimura as Kyoko Okudera
and Yu Yoshizawa as Naoto Sakurai, are particularly
poor and lack a degree of chemistry together
that was needed to make a lot of their scenes
work. Asaka Seto, who plays Takako Nozoe,
is very cute, one can give her that, but she
also gives a pretty bad performance. She just
doesn’t really seem to be giving much
effort to her role, and her sequences with
Yuting Chen, played by Peter Ho, make Mimura
and Yoshizawa’s scenes together seem
almost award quality in contrast.
To be fair, though, the actors
don’t exactly get a lot to work with.
While Takashi Miike crafted credible college
students as his main characters, the sequel
is left with mostly shallow and unbelievable
protagonists in their place. The early sequences
with the characters, before the new string
of deaths start to occur, are kind of nice
to see for their interactions with one another,
but these sequences are very limited as the
killings pick up almost immediately. Once
this starts to occur, the movie introduces
one more main character in the form of detective
Takako, who has been working with Motomiya
to try and discover the truth behind the murders.
Unfortunately, the movie skimps on trying
to better develop this cast or give the audience
any particular reason to care for them. This
ends up being particularly fatal for the “romantic”
sequences between Kyoko Okudera and Naoto
Sakurai as they tend to ring hollow with the
viewer and create for a fairly awkward viewing
experience. The movie does provide a very
minimal back-story for Takako, where her twin
sister was killed while they were children
after picking up a pay phone call and, presumably,
being murdered by whoever was on the other
line that night. Does this event have any
connection to the ones in this film? No, and
the film makes the point to stress this again
and again to the degree where one just wants
to proclaim: “look, we get it, unless
there is actually a connection that’s
going to later be uncovered (and there isn’t),
there is no need to continuously stress how
these aren’t related.” Clearly
this is just intended to give Takako some
motivation as to why she should be as dedicated
to this case as she is, but the frequency
that the writing feels vindicated to mention
it just smacks of writer Daira himself feeling
that it’s a fairly weak character device.
Some of the more broad stereotypes in the
genre are also in full force here, and one
will be hard pressed not to laugh when the
trio of main characters say “Let’s
Split (up)” and, not much later, “Wait
here.”
As for the music, composed
by Koji Endo, it’s mostly unnoticeable
and a viewer will be pretty stressed to recall
even a single theme from the film, or even
if there was background music at all, when
the picture comes to an end. Other productions
values fare a little better, though, with
the special effects being fairly good, minus
Madoka's “twisting” death sequence
which is a fairly inadequate reproduction
of a similar murder in the first. The Taiwan
location stuff is also nice to see, as it
spices things up a little, along with the
fairly creepy set design for Mimiko's step
father’s house, with all of the knives
hanging from the ceiling.
Overall, One Missed Call 2
is hardly a horrible entry in the Japanese horror
genre; in fact, it would have had potential as
a stand-alone movie about Li Li and her victims.
However, the film just doesn’t work as a
legitimate sequel to the first film, as it seems
to spit on the events of its predecessor at every
turn while also digging itself a five-foot grave
based on the plot holes produced from trying to
connect the two. One can only hope that the third
movie in the series fits into the overall storyline
better, although the new writing team certainly
has their work cut out for them after the plot
in this film.
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(2/5)