One Missed Call: Final

**½

 I had no plans to post this on the blog. It was meant for my imdb user account instead. Too long. For a film that will probably not stay on my mind much afterward, the words kept flowing. So I will have to truncate this into something quite less bloated for the imdb account. But here's what spilled from the ole noggin.

Bless Manabu Asô’s heart. So he probably inherits a third film in the rather okay One Missed Call franchise, with little to no money, and must try and craft something entertaining out of it. I admit that I have a soft spot for “revenge ghost girl” movies where a type of Yūrei uses human bodies for various reasons (most of the time to guide a host to the truth behind their demise). 

Final is a different cat, and I was rather pleasantly surprised that there wasn’t an angle for the ghost other than to create mischief and wreak hell on bullies in a school. I think this film will get a few bumps by me just because it inflicts harm on *some* of the bullies who tormented one (and later, we learn, two) very pretty Japanese girls; a bit of a cathartic thrill I cop to enjoying seeing this horrible kids get what’s coming to them. Look, no I don’t condone using violence against people who used a form of harassment to torment innocent people. But cinema/film has a way of doing that: we get to live vicariously through the unleashing of vengeance on those deserved of something bad towards them.

 While I acknowledge that I had some rather nasty thoughts about how bad of damage could be forwarded to those that bullied me when I was a kid who could barely defend himself, I only fought back when I was pushed too far. In the case of Final, Asuka (Maki Horikita) hangs herself at the beginning of the movie after enduring a lot of vicious, cruel bullying by kids in her class (guys and girls, both equally as heinous). Those very kids go on a trip to South Korea from Japan on a tour with two faculty members (the male teacher is quite a pushy, assertive jerk). Asuka’s not dead, however, and while in a coma, it appears “she” is occupying her computer at home…or is Mimiko’s curse doing so?

 Mimiko, a little girl, died from asthma as a child. Her curse is known to motivate terrifying supernatural horrors to bad folks. Fueled by how Asuka was abused, the curse works through the cell phone, forewarning those receiving a message that if they don’t want to die they had better forward it to someone else. So you have the kids turning on each other, begging each other not to send that death message to them. Seeing these rotten kids trying to save their own necks by pretty much killing each other (that’s what friends are for, right?), it is hard not to feel a bit excited. But realizing that if “you do the same to those that torment you that had been afflicted on you, does that make you any different from them?” kind of brings us back down to earth.

Still, the film has a rather regular slasher-style supernatural body count. The first victim is hung like Asuka did to herself, pulled into place by a force we don’t see. The second victim (this had me giggling like a school girl) is hung by an electrical cord from a power line. Other deaths include a poor guy with his fingers broken backwards and his face turning white as his glasses crack (his friends love him so much they force him into a closet and hold the doors closed as he begs for release), one victim chokes while spitting out feathers (?!?!), and another is found in a washing machine.

 You see the ugly side of human nature and personal survival. Like when one nerd gets the call, forwards it to the main bully behind the pack of hyenas that bullied Asuka, and laughs in his face while that dirtbag gags. Or how friends of a girl who gets the call beckon her to forward the message to someone that isn’t in her immediate inner circle. We see how the gang packs up on the one who receives the call trying to keep him or her from forwarding it to anyone else. Essentially you see the high school pal unit collapse, with them all exposed for who they really are and how little they truly care for one another. 

A key moment to me has a girl receiving the call questioning if one of the friends begging her to forward it to someone she isn’t all that buddy-buddy with if she would sacrifice her own life for her friends? This girl asked such a question can’t answer because she is only concerned for her own welfare. Survival, when a person is faced with doom on the horizon, brings out the worst. Here, in Final, we see that once again exemplified in how the kids act when faced with such a possibility as death. 

While I thought the film was rather cheesy in its construction (particularly the special effects) and how the ghost is “culled” (I can’t really say killed as she never is quite done away with) through the use of a “power of positivity” directed by numerous people in the Korean city of the film and many in Japan by forming a message sent to Asuka’s computer, with the sole purpose of shutting the ghost down. 

After each murder, Mimiko, in the manifested form of Asuka (we soon come to realize; how could she be in her room and in a coma on a hospital bed at the same time?), warps the faces of victims on a school photograph. The film really gets rather crazy down the stretch. The whole Mimiko addition, the computer and cell phone technology used as plot device tools, and the loopy murders caused by her does really challenges us not to roll our eyes at the whole development of all of this.

 I still think the film’s best bits feature Asuka’s friend, Emiri (Meisa Kuroki) and her deaf boyfriend, Ahn Jin-wo (Geun-seok Jang). They are out trying to figure out what is going on and how to stop it while the other kids fall apart. It was easy for me to see why the two protagonists get more running time while the kids are shown mostly during moments of hysteria or terror. The care is devoted to Jin-wo and Emiri, while the kids are meat for the grinder. It all ends with a sacrifice but the violent bits (all of them) are so silly in their delivery (the final victim contorts with the sound of bones cracking and blood spots indicating internal hemorrhage) it is hard to take this whole movie as seriously as it hopes we will.

Still, I thought its heart was in the right place regarding its use of bullying and its effects. It puts a spotlight on how it infests and destroys. Film, particularly horror film, has a way of using whatever tools are available to tell a story about how this causes irreparable harm sometimes. A twist regarding Emiri and Asuka's friendship--how one is bullied and when defended efforts of the loyal friend costs her, and instead of coming to the rescue, the one once bullied doesn't help the loyal friend who did--adds a wrinkle in the ongoing plot. It indicts Emiri on not helping Asuka as she was once helped, and the death phone scenario provides a way out for her to make amends for not doing so. Oh, and there's the candy that re-emerges. Good ole candy ball.