SPLIT SECOND (1992)

[Update 10/11/2021: Need to redo this review completely. Fix the screenshots also.]

London 2008 looks a lot like a couple of alleyways and dilapidated rooms from 1992. Rutger Hauer is a cop who, along with his partner, was attacked years earlier by a large nasty creature. His partner died during the attack and Hauer was left with a bizarre sixth-sense that tells him whenever the creature is nearby. It's been quiet recently, but suddenly and without warning the attacks began just as quickly as they stopped. The first victim is a woman in the restroom of a club Hauer is casing. Soon the bodies start piling and Hauer is taking this shit personally. Nothing is going to stop him from killing this monster. Even if it takes longer than a...split second!

Actually I have no idea why SPLIT SECOND was called SPLIT SECOND, but it didn't take me much longer than a split second to figure out that SPLIT SECOND was nothing more than a low-budget PREDATOR 2 clone that falls in line, at least artistically, with pretty much all of the other futuristic action films from the early 90's...CYBORG, HARDWARE, FREEJACK, etc. Still, it's a mildly entertaining watch but we never really get a good idea at what the killer monster is or it's motives. Is it an alien? A mutant rat? A ghost?  A wookalar? How did it learn English? Why is it leaving notes and clues written in blood? What is it's interest with Rutger's character? Why is it supposedly bulletproof and able to run through solid steel doors but yet so easy to kill at the end?

Worth watching if you're really bored, but I can't really recommend it. The story's not strong enough, the action scenes are pretty forgettable and the gritty story sprinkled with comedy moments made the whole thing feel uneven.

Nights misspelled as knights.

ONE MISSED CALL (2008)

Making a remake of the underwhelming original shouldn't be too hard. All you had to do was completely rewrite the story so that it actually made sense...then add in awesome amounts of violence, attractive females, hot dudes, nudity, gore, good music, non-bullshit special effects, genuine scares, intelligent dialogue and a quick pace that left the audience begging for more. As simple as that!

Is that what we got?  Absolutely not.  The American ONE MISSED CALL is just as bullshit as the original Japanese version. The only and I mean only improvement is the story might have been just a little bit more understandable. The biggest disappointment was the lack of attractive females. What the hell? It's bad enough that the film is face-punchingly stupid, but then they make it even worse by not providing anybody attractive to ease my pain! Bullshit! Skip this turd. Oh yeah, the story's about a ghost haunting people through phone calls or something. Skip it.

Part 1 - One Missed Call (2003)
Part 2 - One Missed Call 2 (2005)
Part 3 - One Missed Call 3: Final (2006)

ONE MISSED CALL 2 (2005)

More missed calls. More people die. The End.

It was torture getting through this story. The first film was about a pissed off woman who died in a fire or something, I'm not even sure. Now the second film is about a pissed off little girl who died over a hundred years ago when the local villagers cut out her tongue, sewed her mouth shut and threw her in a mine...I think. Honestly by the last act of the movie I was in such a daze I could barely even remember my name.

Zero gore, zero tits, zero blood, zero scares, confusing as fuck story with a weak ass kid ghost. The only highlight (and it wasn't much of a highlight) was the appearance of that one chick who had a brief role in DEATH NOTE.

Skip this stinker with a vengeance.

Part 1 - One Missed Call (2003)
Part 3 - One Missed Call 3: Final (2006)
Remake - One Missed Call (2008)

I've seen this shot before somewhere...actually that's not true since that film was made a year later.

ONE MISSED CALL (2003)

A young woman receives a mysterious voicemail from herself two days in the future. Two days later (at the exact moment of the voicemail timestamp) she finds herself unexpectedly saying the same shit she said on the voicemail...right before getting tossed in front of a train by a ghost. So now, one-by-one all of the people on her quick dial start getting phone calls and then dying in boring ways two days later. Yawn.

As you can probably tell by now I'm not really the biggest fan of ghost movies, mainly because I don't finds ghosts scary, but at the same time, I kinda like ghost horror movies because of the variety of the stories and there's really no set rules. So with that in mind, I was very excited to watch a ghost movie directed by the great Takashi Miike especially the Takashi Miike from 2003 because that's the same year me made GOZU which might be Miike's finest moment.. Well, I think he probably blew his creative wad on GOZU, because ONE MISSED CALL is lame as fook! The ghost isn't scary and the movie depends too much on jump scenes.  Also, the story is so confusing.  I pretty much tuned out after Kazue Fukiishi died. She was, by far, the most talented actress in the movie, so I'm not sure why she wasn't the main character.

Another thing that irritated me is after Kazue was violently mutilated and beheaded by the ghost on live television(!!!),  the ghost calls the next girl (still on live television!!!) and she just walks off! Something like that would have been the biggest news story since the moon landing and yet this woman is allowed to wanted off and start exploring an old abandoned hospital by herself?! That's even more unrealistic than the idea of the ghost haunting a phone because you know there would be a hundred television crews following her day and night for the next 48 hours.

Not worth watch. Interesting idea, but the story is too confusing and the payoff nonexistent. Skip it.

Part 2 - One Missed Call 2 (2005)
Part 3 - One Missed Call 3: Final (2006)
Remake - One Missed Call (2008)

Crew members hand visible.