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Overview
We’ve watched all types of horror on the Horror Lasagna podcast. One of the many sub-genre’s that is newer is tech horror. We live in a tech world – why not drag it into the horror realm. Like folk horror, except … modern.
Of course it would be a Japanese film that truly makes this horrific genre shine. You may never want to answer the phone again. And Miike (whom we saw in Season 02) still is able to throw in Japanese tropes like the thing with the hair. It does feel a bit similar to audition, but nowhere near like Battle Royale.
If you are looking for very creative deaths, this is the movie to watch. Without resorting to high tech special effects, there is some very cringe worthy killings in here. Jason and Michael have nothing on this ghost.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One_Missed_Call_(2008_film)
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0366292
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Transcription
00:00:00.00
Rhys
Facebook and there’s nothing since like May 7th between you and I and then all of a sudden I could put stuff out and then it would show up but then yeah
00:00:11.58
Stephen Schneider
Yeah, I know they’ve they’ve been doing some security stuff with messenger and it seems like I got to log in every day and it asked for my passcode. So it’ll sync the the messages and blah, blah.
00:00:25.31
Rhys
yeah out of sync is definitely what it seemed to be
00:00:30.04
Stephen Schneider
Yeah. that I remember. having that running like on my computer and people send messages and they’d be like, well, you saw it. And I’m like, no, I didn’t see it. And then it’d be like on my computer and it shows up as red.
00:00:43.12
Stephen Schneider
Cause it, you know, whatever.
00:00:44.53
Rhys
yeah Yep.
00:00:47.37
Stephen Schneider
All right. You’re ready. We’ll get going on a one missed call then. All right. So one missed call. ah One of your favorite directors.
00:00:57.68
Rhys
Chikushin Ari is the Japanese name of this film. And it wasn’t until ah I watched it for the first time for the review, I went back and looked and it’s not actually in my film list.
00:01:12.20
Rhys
The American remake was, and the third one was, but I never recorded this one. So I just added this one to the list to put me a little closer to 13, 14, 1500, wherever I’m at something like that.
00:01:24.28
Stephen Schneider
whoever yeah Cool. So yeah, let’s talk about another, again, this is not the American remake. We’re watching the original. I couldn’t find the American remake at the moment.
00:01:35.00
Stephen Schneider
I know it’s out there, but on streaming right now, it seems to have disappeared. So
00:01:40.66
Rhys
I have it on DVD if you want to borrow it.
00:01:43.34
Stephen Schneider
I got to re-hook up my DVD player. Oh wait, no, it’ll play on the Xbox. So I’m sure can find it at the exchange for like $250 or something.
00:01:47.08
Rhys
There you go. There you go.
00:01:51.19
Rhys
More than likely. It wasn’t very well liked. Yeah. very welllike so
00:01:57.14
Stephen Schneider
Well, I’ll tell you, I really liked this one. We’ll talk you know details about it, but I thought this was really good. And I’ve got a several reasons I wrote down here for our notes why I i so got into this one.
00:02:10.19
Rhys
yeah
00:02:11.57
Stephen Schneider
No teak, teak, teak this time though.
00:02:13.67
Rhys
No, this is Takashi Miike who did audition um back in 2003, I think. No, audition was 1999. One Miss Call was 2003.
00:02:25.70
Rhys
So um audition ran an hour and 55 minutes. And you and I have had this conversation before. the Japanese, they just like to tell their story. And when it’s done, it’s done.
00:02:35.27
Stephen Schneider
Right.
00:02:35.37
Rhys
One Miss Call was an hour and 52 minutes. So they’re very comparable size-wise.
00:02:40.74
Stephen Schneider
And it was another one that did not feel super long. It it felt fairly comfortable for the most part. There were a few little parts, maybe that drug just a bit, but I didn’t feel it drug a whole lot.
00:02:53.47
Rhys
No. um Audition had 10 nominations for awards and it won five. One missed call, zero across the board.
00:03:04.36
Stephen Schneider
Wow.
00:03:05.44
Rhys
um But the funny thing is, Audition’s box office on release was $500,000 roughly worldwide. One missed call was $17.5 million.
00:03:17.32
Stephen Schneider
but that but But again, you know that’s what we got. You can either make a movie that wins a lot of awards and that gets respect from certain people, or you can make something that people eat popcorn to and makes money.
00:03:28.84
Stephen Schneider
It seems like you can’t really get a whole lot of both anymore, especially in the horror genre.
00:03:32.09
Rhys
Yeah.
00:03:34.62
Rhys
We had taken Todd and the Book of Pure Evil and we watched Motherly and it was like, wow, that was really different. And we watched Grabbers and then we watched Unwelcome and we’re like, wow, that was really different.
00:03:47.97
Rhys
And it was kind of surprising, but with Takashi Miike, like he is all over the place with the styles of movies he makes.
00:03:54.85
Stephen Schneider
Thank
00:03:56.13
Rhys
So you never know what you’re going to get when you watch them. So.
00:03:59.78
Stephen Schneider
I’m glad you said that because I wrote that almost exactly down. I’m like, okay, a lot of our other stuff, we can see a lot of the feel of the movie is the same. But this one, I’m like, wow, it feels way different. There’s a few maybe parts I said, but actually I think some of what makes it feel similar is more of Japanese culture horror tropes because some of their horror tropes are different than ours.
00:04:24.01
Stephen Schneider
Like the the the spirit in the the cabinet. That seems to be in like every Japanese horror that you see some spirit in the cabinet thing.
00:04:27.47
Rhys
yes
00:04:32.83
Stephen Schneider
um So I just, I didn’t know if what felt similar was just watching enough Japanese horror now, or it was him.
00:04:42.45
Rhys
It’s not just that it felt similar. um When Miyake did this, he went out to make a mainstream horror movie because a lot of his horror movies, ah he tends to be super violent in a lot of his stuff.
00:04:55.77
Rhys
um And if you notice, like the real heavy violence and gore was kind of missing from this. Yes.
00:05:01.28
Stephen Schneider
Maybe so, but some of the best deaths, and I you know i mean best in the horrific way.
00:05:06.32
Rhys
Yeah.
00:05:08.10
Stephen Schneider
i mean, nothing, Jason, even Hatchet doesn’t have anything against how some of these people ended up meeting their fate.
00:05:08.15
Rhys
Yeah.
00:05:15.86
Rhys
Oh, for sure. Um, So he had set out to do that. And he also, when he made the decision to do this, he’s like, I’m going to give a nod to all of the J horror greats that happened right around the turn of the century.
00:05:31.36
Rhys
So, uh, you’ll, you’ll see elements of Ringu in here. You’ll see elements of Juwan. You’ll see elements of pulse, all of these great movies that came before him by about five years.
00:05:42.78
Rhys
He was like paying tribute to them by bringing them into this film.
00:05:46.55
Stephen Schneider
Yeah, i that’s probably what made it feel more familiar is, you know, like I said, the the in the cabinet, the hair, you know, things with hair and stuff. So, yeah, I can see that.
00:05:58.77
Stephen Schneider
Yeah.
00:05:59.69
Rhys
Yeah. So, um, again, one missed call, there’s not a lot online about it. So, but yeah I ended up doing like primary source interviews and things like that.
00:06:17.23
Rhys
um and he was, audio interviews are very difficult because he’s speaking in Japanese and, you know, a lot of times they’re not ah not necessarily translated.
00:06:28.01
Rhys
but I did find some, some pretty good print, interviews he was involved with. He talked about audition. um and he, he said that the movie starts as one thing and then it breaks down into something completely different. Um,
00:06:44.90
Rhys
and there’s a point he said, there’s a point in a film where people will decide if they will leave the theater or if they want to stay and continue watching the movie. We intentionally made a film where it seems to completely break down and goes in a completely direction, different direction.
00:07:01.24
Rhys
We structured it that way because we felt it worked well for that film. And that’s such a great description of audition.
00:07:07.32
Stephen Schneider
Yeah. Yeah.
00:07:10.00
Stephen Schneider
yeah
00:07:11.70
Rhys
This one, on the other hand, um
00:07:15.51
Rhys
You know, he was going for something much more mainstream. And, uh, he, he sat there and, um, he was talking about it. He said, ring is a good example.
00:07:27.80
Rhys
You have this typical combination of horror scene techniques. You have your camera creeping up slowly from behind. You build suspense with really scary music, and you think something’s going to jump out from that side, but then it comes out from a different direction.
00:07:41.65
Rhys
um and And you can see him nodding to that throughout this whole movie.
00:07:47.37
Stephen Schneider
Yes. Yeah. there There were a couple of good, good examples of that throughout this.
00:07:53.38
Rhys
He also pointed out that um horror movies don’t scare him. Um, one of the interviewers was like, well, what does scare you? He’s like car crashes. Cause like that stuff really happens.
00:08:05.20
Rhys
This stuff doesn’t.
00:08:06.64
Stephen Schneider
ah But I’ll tell you, this did get creepy enough that when your phone rings for a second, you know, after watching it, you’re kind of like, oh should I answer it?
00:08:11.53
Rhys
Oh yeah.
00:08:16.58
Stephen Schneider
And you like go to bed at night and it’s like, wow, it’s really, really dark in here. You know, I mean, it had enough of that creep factor. We’ve watched, you’ve watched over a thousand.
00:08:26.61
Stephen Schneider
And this one I thought was still pretty creepy.
00:08:29.54
Rhys
Yeah. Yeah. The funny thing was when this movie was done, he went on to do hobnobbing the great wall, which is a kid’s movie. So like this was his.
00:08:40.02
Stephen Schneider
Well, this one could be too, if you really don’t like the kids. I never want my niece and nephew to come over again.
00:08:43.29
Rhys
Yeah.
00:08:45.34
Stephen Schneider
Let’s watch One Miss Call.
00:08:47.01
Rhys
Yeah. um
00:08:51.53
Rhys
There’s, there’s this thing. it really one missed call. I felt showed it better than audition. And it’s one of the cultural things in Japan.
00:09:03.62
Rhys
a lot of their culture is based around the Shinto religion, which it turns out isn’t the primary religion in Japan anymore. i think Buddhism is, but it, it is so pervaded their culture that you see aspects of it everywhere throughout.
00:09:13.93
Stephen Schneider
Oh, okay.
00:09:21.49
Stephen Schneider
It’s more just pop culture rather than religion.
00:09:24.60
Rhys
Yeah, I mean, there’s there’s still lots you know millions of people who practice it, but this movie actually shows a lot of that because it’s got like funeral scenes and it’s got like religious you know religious leaders in an exorcism kind of thing. and All of these things that are foreign to us but would be very, very common for them.
00:09:44.83
Stephen Schneider
Yeah, the the whole news broadcast TV show. That was just surreal. We’ll get to that.
00:09:50.64
Rhys
Yeah, super aggressive. Super aggressive. i did um I did think it was really interesting. If you look at horror movies in Japan, like the earliest horror horror movie to show up in Japan was in 1899, which is rivaling Georges Moulet’s.
00:10:14.90
Stephen Schneider
Yeah.
00:10:15.06
Rhys
um It was called Mami Jigari. Then was a silent film called a Page of Madness. Which actually, it was the story of a janitor who works in an insane asylum.
00:10:30.07
Rhys
And the tales of the people who live there, which i just thought, you know, that’s such a great setup.
00:10:36.58
Stephen Schneider
Yeah.
00:10:38.55
Rhys
um But then, and this is, a lot of this is, a lot of this is just me talking, but there is this whole thing where when you got into, you had, you had the post-World War two radiation radiation.
00:10:52.69
Rhys
movies you know all your godzillas and your mothras and things like it was yes um but then you also had on the underside of that you had a lot of their horror movies in the 60s or so dealt with folktales and so you had on ibata you had um uh quite
00:10:55.67
Stephen Schneider
Which, speaking of, this was a Toho production. Right,
00:11:16.53
Rhys
Kwailan, Ujutsu. You had a bunch of these that if you look at them, they take place in like Shogun or Ronan era, you know, classical Japan.
00:11:24.54
Stephen Schneider
right.
00:11:25.27
Rhys
There are ghost stories based on that. Then you get into the 70s and things get a little weird. You have Hausa, which is on an upcoming season. So you’ll get to watch that.
00:11:36.44
Stephen Schneider
ah Okay, good.
00:11:38.41
Rhys
had Tetsuo, the Iron Man, and all of them are just like, that those are the movies that, in my eye, push the cultural boundary between East and West. So for us, it’s really difficult to watch.
00:11:51.74
Rhys
I don’t want to say difficult to watch, difficult to understand because they’re talking about cultural things that are radically different than ours.
00:11:57.08
Stephen Schneider
Right, right.
00:11:59.22
Rhys
But then in the 90s, you had this thing where all of a sudden the Japanese were scared of technology. And, you know, I don’t want to say the Japanese, but like Japanese horror movies all were based on technology. You had Ringu, which is, you know, you have phone calls and VHS tapes and people coming out of the television. had Pulse, which is just all of a sudden there’s this digital signal and you are reduced to nothing but a shadow when it goes through.
00:12:27.78
Rhys
um All these kind of movies. And this really hits that stride as well.
00:12:35.55
Stephen Schneider
Yeah, yeah. It was interesting watching because they all had flip phones. ah So, you know, it dated it just a little bit there.
00:12:46.55
Stephen Schneider
But ah yeah, I’ve got a few more things as we go on that, too.
00:12:51.35
Rhys
Yeah. The other thing that I thought was really interesting and i you know, so there was a movie back in 2001 called pulse, which is a Japanese film. And like I said, it it was like, there’s this mysterious electrical pulse that goes around and it, it will make you commit suicide or, um, you know, it,
00:13:12.21
Rhys
And it has like this kind of ghostly thing associated with it. Then you have One Missed Call in 2003 where you have these cell phones that are going off and you answer your cell phone and you die two days later. And I just kept thinking, I bitched a lot about Battle Royale and Hunger Games.
00:13:29.90
Rhys
i would I would be remiss if I did not mention that three years after One Missed Call, Stephen King wrote a book called Cell.
00:13:37.48
Stephen Schneider
Well, yeah, which is like the exact same setup.
00:13:40.95
Rhys
Basically. Yes. Yeah. It’s a lot more like pulse, but still i thought, wow, that you know, that’s, I don’t want to skip that.
00:13:47.38
Stephen Schneider
Yeah.
00:13:50.08
Stephen Schneider
Yeah, yeah.
00:13:50.26
Rhys
um
00:13:50.91
Stephen Schneider
and And how many TV shows or movies have had the watch this video and you’ll die in in three days, in seven days? You know, I’ve seen that that type of episode on so many different TV shows, cop shows especially.
00:14:02.85
Rhys
Oh yeah.
00:14:05.34
Rhys
Oh sure. And lots of movies too. Yeah. yeah It pops up everywhere. Meike had gone to study ah with a famous director called Shohai Imamura, mostly because there was no admission requirements to get into his classes.
00:14:23.22
Rhys
And then he would tend to skip his classes because he just couldn’t be bothered. This is when he was like a a young man. um So a local television station called and asked them for an intern.
00:14:34.93
Rhys
And they’re like, you know what? He never goes to class anyway. Send him. And so he ended up as an intern on this television thing. And not unlike a lot of the directors we talk about, he makes connections there, learns how to do things, and then he starts making things from there on out.
00:14:51.44
Stephen Schneider
Oh, cool. Nice.
00:14:52.29
Rhys
So if you are some slacker who just you know can’t get your butt to class, there’s still hope for you.
00:14:58.52
Stephen Schneider
But sit in the front row. That’s right. That’s the advice.
00:15:01.57
Rhys
Sit in the front row. That’s right. um He has four upcoming movies. ah He’s got, yeah, he’s got something called Bad Lieutenant Tokyo.
00:15:08.40
Stephen Schneider
Wow.
00:15:12.62
Rhys
um He’s got a movie called Sham. He’s got a movie called Nyight of the Living Cats, which is an animated movie um based on the theme that if you touch a cat, you turn into one.
00:15:26.28
Rhys
And so all of the people of the world are being overrun by cats and they’re trying to not touch them.
00:15:32.54
Stephen Schneider
Wow.
00:15:33.61
Rhys
Yeah.
00:15:33.63
Stephen Schneider
That sounds like a video game.
00:15:33.80
Rhys
Yeah. Yeah, it should be. And then this one blew me away. I don’t have much in the way of specifics about it, but he is remaking Audition.
00:15:46.28
Rhys
And chart Charlie XCX has something to do with it.
00:15:46.52
Stephen Schneider
Wow.
00:15:50.93
Rhys
When you look it up, ah she is the only person listed under the cast.
00:15:56.85
Stephen Schneider
Wow. Okay.
00:15:58.38
Rhys
But I was like, wow, all right. So that’s coming up.
00:16:04.76
Stephen Schneider
That’ll be interesting to see and and come, compet come, come past and contraire.
00:16:10.03
Rhys
Yes, those words.
00:16:11.85
Stephen Schneider
Yes.
00:16:14.20
Rhys
um Koshibasaki played Yumi. ah She’s an actress. She’s a musician. the way the way she’s described, she almost sounds like a Lady Gaga-esque figure in in Japan, where she’s like just sitting on the zeitgeist, you know riding that wave, doing everything she possibly can.
00:16:35.75
Rhys
She’s been in 76 movies. We’ve seen one of them, Battle Royale.
00:16:40.73
Stephen Schneider
I was going to say a lot of these kids look like they could have been in battle royale royale
00:16:40.77
Rhys
ah
00:16:46.02
Rhys
I went through and only two show up, but she was in battle Royale. She was also in 47 Ronin. um She had a voiceover part in the boy in the Heron. um
00:16:56.45
Stephen Schneider
yeah
00:16:57.11
Rhys
Miyazaki’s latest film was his latest. And she’s got one upcoming film. She’s in sham, which is directed by A gay. So sham.
00:17:06.03
Stephen Schneider
that sounds like a western Yeah.
00:17:10.27
Rhys
Well, it’s an all Japanese cast, so that would be very bizarre, but still, you know.
00:17:14.63
Stephen Schneider
That wouldn’t put it past anybody.
00:17:16.51
Rhys
Yeah. Shinichi Zutsutsi plays Hiroshi. um He was originally a stage actor, and this is this blew my mind. he is 20 years older than Ko Shibasaki.
00:17:32.68
Rhys
So he is 20 years older than Yumi in this movie.
00:17:32.94
Stephen Schneider
wow
00:17:37.18
Rhys
You’d never know it to look at him.
00:17:39.07
Stephen Schneider
No, geez.
00:17:39.97
Rhys
like she She was born in like 83 or something. He was born in the 60s.
00:17:44.54
Stephen Schneider
Wow, genetics.
00:17:45.97
Rhys
Yeah. ah He’s been in 97 screen pieces. um And the only one that i that interested, don’t want to say interested me, they all interested me, but the only one that like jumped out at me, they did a live action version of Space Battleship Yamamoto.
00:18:03.79
Stephen Schneider
Yes. Yeah, they did. I’ve got it
00:18:06.00
Rhys
i Yeah, I had no idea. Well, he’s in that.
00:18:09.13
Stephen Schneider
Oh, okay. that thats That was one of my favorite cartoons of the 70s.
00:18:12.99
Rhys
Me too. it
00:18:14.64
Stephen Schneider
Yeah, the sound the song beginning and everything, the ship.
00:18:18.00
Rhys
Yeah.
00:18:18.45
Stephen Schneider
Yeah.
00:18:19.07
Rhys
It was one of those cartoons that you would watch it like force was out too. Right. And you’d watch that and you know, okay, that’s fine. But like a guy ends up with a disease and they just leave him stranded on a planet, you know, like some barren rock.
00:18:32.72
Rhys
And I’m like, that’s really heavy for a sixth grader to be watching while he’s waiting for the bus to come, you know?
00:18:39.91
Stephen Schneider
Yeah, they were good, though.
00:18:41.95
Rhys
Oh yeah. Fabulous. Kazooie.
00:18:44.14
Stephen Schneider
yeah And the live action, it is cool because you see the Yamamoto and then the wave gun fires, you know, it’s just very impressive looking.
00:18:55.63
Stephen Schneider
ah You know, I always loved the cartoon when that happened, obviously, just like the Phoenix turning into Firebird Phoenix, ah you know.
00:19:02.24
Rhys
Yeah.
00:19:02.52
Stephen Schneider
But yeah.
00:19:04.93
Rhys
uh, Kazooie Fukiishi plays Natsumi. She’s been in 75 pieces again. You know, these guys have so much stuff. It’s a lot of it, almost all Japanese, but she was also in 13 assassins.
00:19:17.55
Rhys
So there was a title I recognized. Um, and Anna Nagata plays Yoko. She’s only Nagata.
00:19:23.77
Stephen Schneider
Anna, Gata, Davida.
00:19:27.06
Rhys
Yeah.
00:19:27.66
Stephen Schneider
Yeah. got sorry
00:19:29.37
Rhys
um she’s only been in eight pieces, but one of them was battle Royale. So she did battle. We’ve seen a quarter of her films. So
00:19:36.78
Stephen Schneider
yeah Well, yeah you know, you mentioned also ah this one, you know, must have done super well. It had two sequels. Yeah.
00:19:45.07
Rhys
it did. And I had seen the last one. And in fact, when I was getting stuff out of the library, I had seen ah one miss call final first. That was the first one I found. And I couldn’t find any of the other two.
00:19:58.37
Rhys
um eventually I did see the second one and I don’t think I recorded it. and The only room reason I remember it was because it was strange. Now that I know more about me, it isn’t, but I I’m pretty sure it’s like Japanese students in Korea.
00:20:13.36
Rhys
um So it was a little bit different in that way, but now we, we have this on streaming on to be.
00:20:22.10
Stephen Schneider
and Thanks. Thanks to Tubi, man.
00:20:24.57
Rhys
Yep. And I’m,
00:20:26.32
Stephen Schneider
It’s picked up at the right time, right? As Netflix discs disappeared. Now we got Tubi and Shudder has been picking up a lot in the last couple of years too.
00:20:33.11
Rhys
I am.
00:20:35.72
Stephen Schneider
So.
00:20:36.13
Rhys
Yeah. I am so glad that it was not dubbed too.
00:20:40.62
Stephen Schneider
Yes.
00:20:40.65
Rhys
I think that would have ruined this if it was a dubbed version.
00:20:43.91
Stephen Schneider
A hundred percent. Now, you know, some people don’t necessarily like to watch the screen because they got to read everything, but you hear the actor’s actual voices as they’re moving.
00:20:54.45
Stephen Schneider
You know, it’s different when someone’s sitting in a sound booth, just reading the words as opposed to being on a set and acting it as you’re saying it. Though, ah the the what’s his face, the guy, I thought he was a little overacted at times, but when you said he he did stage plays, I’m like okay, well that makes sense.
00:21:10.84
Stephen Schneider
Yeah.
00:21:11.07
Rhys
Yeah. Yeah. um And you, you’re right. This is a Toho production. um And Toho, if you look at the things that they distributed, it’s just, they are like me, they are all over the map.
00:21:28.56
Rhys
um And it, it really surprised me because like, you know, Godzilla minus one and Godzilla King of monsters, and they did not do the first Godzilla movie.
00:21:41.28
Stephen Schneider
Right, the the original original one.
00:21:43.91
Rhys
Yeah. Mothra was the first of the monsters that they released. That was them, which I thought, Oh, that’s, that’s kind of interesting. I had no idea.
00:21:53.66
Stephen Schneider
Yeah. ah And there’s actually, i know Colin has it all broken down into the eras of Godzilla as far as the different directors or different people who were in charge and the direction they took Godzilla. So it’s really interesting to see.
00:22:09.37
Stephen Schneider
But I love that they’ve kept the the franchise and their biggest one was the last one they did a couple of years ago. And it surprised everybody. I love that because it was a really fantastic movie.
00:22:21.94
Rhys
Yeah. Well, that’s the first thing you see on the screen when the movie starts. So let’s talk about the rest of it now.
00:22:28.28
Stephen Schneider
Let’s go.
00:22:30.23
Rhys
um
00:22:31.48
Stephen Schneider
away. Sorry.
00:22:35.63
Rhys
That might be you calling yourself from two days in the future.
00:22:38.06
Stephen Schneider
I’m not even checking my voicemail.
00:22:41.08
Rhys
and don’t even want to know.
00:22:42.50
Stephen Schneider
Yeah, it could sit there.
00:22:45.87
Rhys
um The movie starts, you have a bunch of friends at a barbecue. um and I don’t think American barbecue, think Korean barbecue. They’re all in a restaurant. There’s a grill right there at the at the table.
00:22:58.09
Rhys
um Yumi is trying to get the grill started. And it really had this final destination kind of feel to it, didn’t it?
00:23:04.43
Stephen Schneider
Yeah, that’s what i thought. I’m like, wow, Japanese trust their but people at the restaurant to actually use a gas grill.
00:23:11.71
Rhys
Yeah.
00:23:11.78
Stephen Schneider
They wouldn’t do that in America because we’d be stupid and blow the whole restaurant up.
00:23:15.64
Rhys
ah They will bring you a um cast iron dish that is actively still sizzling and say, be careful, it’s hot.
00:23:23.54
Stephen Schneider
Yes, because Americans will grab it and then sue. So instead of like, well, I’m not that stupid to grab it. So.
00:23:33.25
Rhys
There’s a lot of discussion going on between the friends um about the only thing that pops up out of this first opening scene is that Yumi is scared of peepholes.
00:23:44.85
Rhys
you know, through a door. And when that comes up, there’s like this flashback of a peephole and somebody cutting their toenails just as she finally gets the grill to light.
00:23:55.96
Stephen Schneider
Yeah. And, and ah this is kind of a misdirection because like you said, where the story goes near the end, it changes, but this doesn’t come up a whole lot. So it is I thought it was done really well.
00:24:09.64
Stephen Schneider
getting you to think about it and forget about it because it’s never mentioned for like an hour and 10 more minutes or something, you know?
00:24:09.80
Rhys
Yeah.
00:24:15.81
Rhys
And there’s, there’s even opportunity to write because he, you know, the whole first time, uh, he mentions to her about her parents and she’s like, oh I haven’t seen them.
00:24:18.60
Stephen Schneider
Right.
00:24:24.99
Rhys
You’re like, oh and then nothing.
00:24:27.90
Stephen Schneider
Right.
00:24:27.97
Rhys
They could have done something there, but no, he purposely waits until later.
00:24:31.77
Stephen Schneider
Yeah. And, and I, I picked up a couple of those. I’m like, okay, there’s something there going on, but I couldn’t figure out what it was obviously because there really weren’t any good clues, just hints.
00:24:45.25
Rhys
Yeah. Yeah. Um, one of the guys is telling a story that is very eerily similar to the grudge or Juwan when this, when this came out.
00:24:55.96
Stephen Schneider
Right.
00:24:56.20
Rhys
Um, and while he’s talking about it and he’s like, there was this, I think a guy was washing his hair and there was someone in the shower. And while he’s doing it, this gray dead hand just appears on Yumi’s shoulder.
00:25:07.55
Rhys
and um, she doesn’t even seem to notice at first, but then when she does, she turns and it’s Yoko and it’s just a normal hand. um And she had just come from a funeral of a high school friend who drowned in a pool.
00:25:21.24
Stephen Schneider
Yes. And, and, and this starts the everything being interconnected, ah which was again, done very well.
00:25:29.77
Rhys
Yeah. Yeah. um They also throw the dates and times up at the screen, but they do it in Japanese. So all we really see are the numbers. That’s the only thing we understand.
00:25:41.32
Stephen Schneider
Right.
00:25:41.68
Rhys
yeah, date date and time is a very important theme in this film. So,
00:25:47.33
Stephen Schneider
Yes. I got more to say about that later.
00:25:50.05
Rhys
um, she goes into the bathroom to change. Yoko does. Yumi goes with her. um and, uh, Mieke has always done this where like, oh, they’re talking about the fact that her friend died in the pool and he’ll just throw in a flash of like a dead corpse lying in the pool.
00:26:07.99
Rhys
Not unlike suddenly throwing in a flash of a tongue and some fingers on a restaurant floor kind of thing. um But it’s just like this, bam, you know here’s this visceral thing for you to chew on for a second.
00:26:19.37
Stephen Schneider
Right. And it’s your your brain takes a second to catch up with what your eyes just saw. And by then it’s moved on and and you don’t want to miss what’s going on. So it he definitely messes with people doing stuff like that.
00:26:33.45
Rhys
Yeah. um A phone starts to ring. It’s a bizarre kind of ding, ding, ding, kind of ringtone. Um, Yumi’s like, Hey, Yoko, your phone’s ringing. She’s like, that’s not my ringtone. She’s like, but it’s your phone.
00:26:47.90
Rhys
Um, it goes to voicemail and Yoko comes out all changed and she goes over and listens to the voicemail and it is from her from two days in the future. Um, and you can hear her say, Oh no, it’s raining. And then she screams, um,
00:27:05.28
Rhys
And there’s this really cool little jump scare because he frames it from inside a bathroom stall. You can see the two of them talking and it’s dark on both sides.
00:27:12.51
Stephen Schneider
Yeah.
00:27:16.46
Rhys
They’re in the light. And then as soon as they hear that, the door to the bathroom stall closes.
00:27:22.47
Stephen Schneider
Yeah.
00:27:22.51
Rhys
So.
00:27:23.00
Stephen Schneider
So you get, you, you start thinking that there’s like a creature or something after them. So again, it’s a little misdirection going on.
00:27:31.27
Rhys
Yeah, just slightly though.
00:27:33.75
Stephen Schneider
Yeah.
00:27:34.57
Rhys
Um, the back out of the party, everybody is trying to figure out how this worked. And the one guy’s like, maybe your boyfriend setting you up. And she’s like, would I be here if I had a boyfriend? And all of a sudden, like a light bulb goes off in his head.
00:27:48.22
Rhys
he’s like, Hey, let’s all go to my buddy’s place down by the lake. Let’s share some phone numbers. Um, and so they all start, uh, passing their phone numbers around. and um Yumi seems really distracted by this whole situation.
00:28:04.19
Rhys
kind of she’s like everyone else is laughing and having a good time. Yumi is pretty serious through the whole thing. And it’s almost like she has some sort of premonition of what’s going what’s to come.
00:28:14.79
Stephen Schneider
Yeah, I couldn’t figure out her completely in that regard. ah
00:28:19.51
Rhys
Yeah.
00:28:20.06
Stephen Schneider
she She was very protective of her friend later, but she doesn’t seem to relax and enjoy herself with them as much.
00:28:28.61
Rhys
Right. um We cut to a corpse lying on a slab. And you have a medical examiner there and he opens her mouth and he’s looking inside and this hard boiled detective shows up and asks him, what is, what are you doing?
00:28:45.05
Rhys
um And he says, you’re not very friendly. And the mortician never says anything. Turns out his name is Hiroshi and he is a main character in the story. But a lot of times he’s, you know, in the first half of the movie, he doesn’t say a word.
00:28:59.22
Stephen Schneider
Yeah, he just is a creeper.
00:29:01.09
Rhys
Yeah. Yeah. uh, the cop thinks there’s something fishy about this girl’s desk death. And he says, uh, he asked the mortician if his sister’s name was Ritsuko to which the mortician doesn’t answer. He just leaves.
00:29:14.41
Rhys
Just walks out.
00:29:17.67
Rhys
Uh, we’re now in a lecture hall and, um, you have Yuki listening to the lecture about, abused children and how abused children will suddenly start to hurt other kids.
00:29:31.77
Rhys
Um,
00:29:32.48
Stephen Schneider
Which is actually, was like, okay, this has to mean something ah for the movie. And it was a huge hint about the whole movie, actually. It’s it’s probably the the the biggest, here’s what’s going on in the movie, I think.
00:29:47.80
Rhys
And I, I really, it, this brings me back to Ari Aster. Cause like when you’re watching midsummer, there’ll just be some offhand conversation over here. And something out of that is actually super important, but he doesn’t really highlight it.
00:30:01.67
Rhys
It’s just happening.
00:30:01.77
Stephen Schneider
Right.
00:30:03.10
Rhys
And it’s same thing happens here.
00:30:03.16
Stephen Schneider
Right.
00:30:05.41
Rhys
um Yoko is actively breaking up with her boyfriend in class and um the via text, you know, as one does,
00:30:13.95
Stephen Schneider
She’s
00:30:15.47
Rhys
And ah the professor calls her out and he’s like, what’s this about? What’s this class about? And then she like stands up and gives him this really generic, but accurate answer about abuse spawning more abuse.
00:30:25.98
Rhys
And he’s like, yeah, pretty much. And then he goes back to the lecture.
00:30:28.31
Stephen Schneider
Yeah. yeah Yeah. love that. That was the best. And he can’t even get out of his chair. That, that cracked me up.
00:30:34.82
Rhys
Yeah. ah But then you get this cut of somebody cutting their toenails and, these This toenail clipping thing just keeps popping up. You’re like, what? in the you know It seems very bizarre, um but it actually ties in here towards the end.
00:30:52.60
Stephen Schneider
Yeah, because we don’t realize it’s like a macro view that you’re focused in on some one particular part and not getting the whole thing.
00:31:01.06
Rhys
Yeah. ah Cut to night. Yumi is at home, and her phone rings, and she answers it and it’s Yugo. And she’s walking over train tracks and you can hear the train crossing bells ringing.
00:31:14.92
Rhys
And, um, I’m telling you, man.
00:31:18.31
Stephen Schneider
Honestly, that’s with three different phone calls.
00:31:25.18
Rhys
Um, suddenly there’s a closeup of the protective fence and it just starts to break almost like someone’s got wire cutters that are invisible.
00:31:34.16
Stephen Schneider
That was one of the coolest effects. yeah It was creepy without being anything creepy. You know, I mean, you just don’t see a chain link fence just going chink and breaking like that.
00:31:45.77
Rhys
Yep.
00:31:46.78
Stephen Schneider
Yeah.
00:31:46.88
Rhys
Shearing one by one in a row.
00:31:48.28
Stephen Schneider
Yeah. You know, it’s, it’s a simple, easy thing to as far as effects go, but it was so effective and I’ve never seen it before in any movie, you know, unless it’s a predator and we know the predators there and invisible, you know?
00:31:59.87
Rhys
Yeah.
00:32:03.26
Stephen Schneider
Yeah.
00:32:03.33
Rhys
Yeah. um Yumi realizes that the message that Yoko received is right about this time. And all of a sudden…
00:32:14.39
Rhys
Yoko’s like, oh, no, it’s raining, which is exactly what the message said. um yo ah Yumi makes that connection and then something is approaching Yoko from behind. This goes back to what he was saying about you know these kinds of movies.
00:32:29.23
Rhys
ah She stiffens up and she hears a noise. It almost sounds like air out of an air compressor, just like a blast of air. turns screams and is then mystically dragged through this now cut open fence thrown over lands on top of a train passing train as she falls off the bridge and is no more yeah uh there’s a shot afterwards of her severed arm dialing a phone
00:32:49.35
Stephen Schneider
Yeah, she bounces when she hits. Yeah.
00:32:57.22
Stephen Schneider
Yeah, but I love how they did it. They real close up, like a lot of things, and it’s the fingers moving, and then they back up. It’s like, oh, it’s not connected to anything. It was pretty gruesome.
00:33:06.13
Rhys
Yeah. So the, the thing on, on the phone, you’re like, Oh, maybe she’s live. It’s just calling nine one one into pans back and know that arms not attached to anything.
00:33:15.72
Stephen Schneider
Right, and I was even thinking, I’m like, damn, how many numbers do they have to dial to get 911 in Japan? Because you’d be dead before you get through all those numbers she’s dialing.
00:33:24.92
Rhys
Yeah. Uh, cut to the funeral. um cat Yumi is going into Yoko’s room. She’s looking at pictures of the wall. She’s leaving. There’s magazines.
00:33:36.80
Rhys
I think she’s kind of pondering why this happened, looking for some sort of meaning or explanation. um And then all of a sudden the door opens up and Hiroshi comes out. The mortician. He’s just in this other room in Yoko’s house.
00:33:50.58
Rhys
um She’s like, what are you doing? And he doesn’t answer her. He just leaves. Just walks out.
00:33:55.23
Stephen Schneider
it’s Very creepy, dude.
00:33:56.92
Rhys
Yeah.
00:33:57.80
Stephen Schneider
and i and they everybody thinks it’s a suicide. And my thought is, okay, so she had bolt cutters essentially and cut through a chain link fence to jump off. Where’s where’s the cutters?
00:34:11.33
Stephen Schneider
You know, but skipped all of that.
00:34:13.69
Rhys
Yeah. Yeah. Again, the police don’t necessarily look great in this movie.
00:34:17.19
Stephen Schneider
Yeah, yeah.
00:34:18.57
Rhys
Um, as Hiroshi’s leaving, he passes Natsumi in the hall. Um, and through an open door, you can see the silhouette of a girl standing in the dark, just creepily standing there. You can’t see any details or anything.
00:34:33.78
Rhys
Cue some spooky music. They don’t say anything about her. um And all of this is happening while a group of schoolgirls is walking away gossiping about what just happened to Yoko.
00:34:44.99
Stephen Schneider
Yeah.
00:34:47.13
Rhys
They point out that she got a call from her own phone number. they said She said the call was a warning of her own death. And that Rina, the girl who just drowned, got that same call.
00:34:57.82
Rhys
These girls have connected that Rina was killed. And it called Yoko’s phone because… there’s a spirit of a woman driven by hate.
00:35:09.59
Rhys
And after she murders you, she goes to the numbers in your cell phone to pick the next victim.
00:35:14.58
Stephen Schneider
such a modern technological horror.
00:35:17.76
Rhys
Yes. oh And one of the things that, uh, me, he had said in one of the interviews is that, you know, a lot of his movies deal with brutality, but in this one, he had to embrace that whole Japanese sense of hatefulness,
00:35:34.56
Rhys
that the spirits always seem to have, which is something that I think is pretty, you know, Eastern as opposed to Western.
00:35:36.78
Stephen Schneider
Yeah.
00:35:43.64
Rhys
It was one of those kinds of things where so many Western things you have, Oh, there’s a ghost. Oh, well, Hey, here’s her, here’s your body. We’re going to get to proper burial. The ghost goes away. And then you like watched you on and it’s not a ghost. It’s this place is cursed. If you step in it, you die because bad stuff happened here and the bad stuff keeps happening.
00:36:03.48
Stephen Schneider
Yeah, it infused the the area.
00:36:05.46
Rhys
Yes.
00:36:06.12
Stephen Schneider
Yeah.
00:36:06.58
Rhys
Yes. Um, they tell him that Sue me and you mean that they should screen their calls. I don’t know what that would help because the whole movie is called one missed call. So
00:36:15.57
Stephen Schneider
Yeah. Yeah. I wondered that also, but.
00:36:20.38
Rhys
Yumi is talking to Yoko’s. Well, it would have been ex boyfriend. Um, Because she was going to break up with him via text. Kenji. um She’s like, she explains this whole phone message thing.
00:36:33.45
Rhys
Police are calling it suicide. And then he like pulls out his phone and he plays a message for her where he says, ah shit, I forgot. And like, there’s only two minutes left before this is supposed to happen.
00:36:48.58
Rhys
And like a lot of guys would do he’s just going to choose to ignore it.
00:36:53.05
Stephen Schneider
Yeah, I was going to mention that. I’m like, even in Japan, guys are guys.
00:36:57.72
Rhys
Yeah. He’s like, oh, it’s a setup. Everyone’s trying to trick me. It’s just cruel. He goes the elevator and presses the button. um And this girl calls his name from across the way. And she’s like, you missed our study group.
00:37:12.41
Rhys
And he’s like, oh, shit, I completely forgotten. And suddenly dawns on him. i just said that. And the elevator doors open and it is just an empty elevator shaft.
00:37:21.67
Stephen Schneider
and And there were this scene and a couple other scenes made me think of the the girl running away from the slashers. You know, they they trip and fall and then sit there screaming. You know, he’s there.
00:37:33.22
Stephen Schneider
He knows this is the time. He just said the line. The elevator door, and there’s nothing there. And he stands there. I’m like, get your feet moving, dude. Run this far. But then again, you don’t know. Maybe that’s what would have caused it. Exactly. You know.
00:37:46.15
Rhys
Invisible hands grab his legs and just pull him down the elevator shaft.
00:37:51.61
Stephen Schneider
Yeah, and Yumi sits there watching the whole thing. Yeah.
00:37:54.12
Rhys
Well, and I thought actually this was a really, a really great little scene because Yumi’s just in shock by what she’s just seen. She drops to her knees and then the elevator doors close and open back up.
00:38:04.44
Stephen Schneider
yeah
00:38:08.03
Rhys
And there’s like three guys on the elevator going, what’s going on? And they cut to Kanchi in the bottom of the elevator shaft. He’s all busted up and he’s not quite dead. And he opens his mouth and this red ball falls out.
00:38:21.19
Rhys
And I’m like, what the hell was that?
00:38:21.48
Stephen Schneider
Yeah. Yeah. He’s twitching. i mean, you know, that, that very, very like disturbing twitching.
00:38:29.80
Rhys
ah Then his phone just starts to dial a new a number. It doesn’t even want his fingers touching it anymore. It’s not necessary. They’ll just dial all by itself.
00:38:38.32
Stephen Schneider
Yeah.
00:38:39.87
Rhys
ah Yumi is at the police telling them something mysterious is going on. And they’re like, there were witnesses at both of these deaths. They were suicides. And one of the things that I really like is the cop comes over and he leans over her and he’s like smoking while he’s talking. You could almost smell the scene.
00:38:56.63
Stephen Schneider
Yes.
00:38:57.62
Rhys
i was like, I can just, there’s like coffee on his breath and and tobacco smoke all around her head. i can, I can, I can viscerally close my eyes and imagine that.
00:39:05.30
Stephen Schneider
Yeah. Like 40 here.
00:39:09.01
Rhys
Yeah.
00:39:11.94
Rhys
Yumi and Natsuki are discussing the events of the past few days. And Natsuki pulls out the fact that um Kenji’s number was in Yoko’s phone. And both of them had their phone numbers in Kenji’s phone.
00:39:24.74
Rhys
And then Natsuki’s phone search starts to ring. She goes to answer it. She’s like, oh, it’s just an old boyfriend. Yumi takes it out of her hand, turns it off, and turns her own fault phone off.
00:39:37.62
Rhys
And they’re having a sleepover to deal with all of their dead friends, I guess. um
00:39:42.55
Stephen Schneider
but
00:39:45.24
Stephen Schneider
No, go ahead. Right.
00:39:46.26
Rhys
Well, they’re just, they’re both sleeping in the same space and Yuki gets up in the middle of the night to go get something to eat. um There’s this, there’s this clock. They keep showing this clock and it becomes a big deal later, but they keep showing this clock as the hands go through.
00:40:03.67
Rhys
All of a sudden, Natsumi’s phone starts to ring, even though it had been turned off.
00:40:09.39
Stephen Schneider
right
00:40:10.42
Rhys
um And she has one missed call. And now we find out that Natsumi only has two days, but instead of it being an audio message, this one’s a photograph, which is new technology back then.
00:40:23.45
Stephen Schneider
And it was creepy because there wasn’t anything really in it to be creepy.
00:40:30.06
Rhys
Yes, you have Natsumi standing there looking back nervously and a hand.
00:40:30.92
Stephen Schneider
and There was a hand. There was a hand around the corner.
00:40:37.08
Rhys
You’re just like, I mean, it’s creepy for sure, but you have a hard time putting a finger on it.
00:40:43.73
Stephen Schneider
Yeah, exactly.
00:40:46.38
Rhys
ah Both girls go to school the next day um and everybody wants to erase their phone numbers from Natsuki’s phone. And she’s like, go ahead. I understand. Please do. But Yumi won’t let her.
00:40:57.44
Rhys
So she takes the phone and the two of them go the phone company and cancel my cancel my practice cancel my contract.
00:41:02.34
Stephen Schneider
ah I love ah the, I love the rep, you know, you’re like, okay, yeah, sure. Here you go. I’m like, yeah, that’s not America. They they would like keep those papers from you as long as possible.
00:41:14.16
Rhys
Oh yeah. yeah
00:41:14.61
Stephen Schneider
night yeah We’ll give you a better deal.
00:41:16.92
Rhys
Yeah, exactly. um and the phone gets thrown in to be recycled. So the girls go back home and they walk out of their elevator and there’s an entire television crew in the hallway.
00:41:28.92
Rhys
And this producer comes up and he’s like, I’m doing this show on exorcism. I want Natsuki to be on it. He’s super pushy in their face. um He asks, to see he’s like, do you have the phone?
00:41:39.59
Rhys
They’re like, no, we got rid of it. So he just takes a cast you know crew member’s phone, says, hold this. And Natsuki is just like shocked by all this. She’s standing there holding the phone, looking weird and scared.
00:41:49.93
Rhys
And they’re like getting B-roll footage, you know, while she’s doing this.
00:41:52.28
Stephen Schneider
yeah
00:41:54.48
Rhys
And then all of a sudden um her phone rings. Or the phone that they borrowed from somebody rings.
00:42:01.85
Stephen Schneider
Yeah, that was really weird.
00:42:03.76
Rhys
Yeah.
00:42:03.87
Stephen Schneider
And I’ll say the news crew here, this is another, I’m i’m but hoping, believing that it’s another cultural Japanese trope because most Japanese movies I’ve seen with a news crew, they all act like this, that that almost swarm effect.
00:42:20.09
Stephen Schneider
And they’re very hyper.
00:42:20.15
Rhys
Super aggressive. Yeah.
00:42:21.61
Stephen Schneider
Yeah. Yeah. And, and, you know, I’m like, wow, are they like that in real life? Is it the stereotype because it’s how it really is? i don’t know, but it seems like the same type of news crew all the time.
00:42:33.08
Rhys
Big in chasing trends too. Like they keep their ear to the ground. And so when they hear this kind of shit, they’re there.
00:42:38.92
Stephen Schneider
Yeah.
00:42:39.88
Rhys
ah She looks at the phone and it’s the same picture as before, but this time you just don’t have an arm. You’ve got a head leaning out long black hair.
00:42:47.36
Stephen Schneider
Hair.
00:42:47.71
Rhys
Yep.
00:42:50.94
Rhys
um
00:42:53.62
Rhys
So Yumi’s like, just leave this be. And Natsuki’s like, no, I want to go with them. Cause guy’s like, I’ve got a guy. He’ll take care of it. He’ll fix it all. It’ll be great.
00:43:03.58
Stephen Schneider
And to hear the news crew later and stuff, they don’t really believe it. that Oh my God, this is news. People are into it, but it’s not really to happen.
00:43:12.85
Rhys
Yeah.
00:43:12.94
Stephen Schneider
I don’t really believe this.
00:43:13.01
Rhys
We’re going to play it up.
00:43:14.29
Stephen Schneider
Yeah.
00:43:14.39
Rhys
Yeah.
00:43:14.81
Stephen Schneider
Yeah.
00:43:16.09
Rhys
Um, Yumi looks down the hall and sees Hiroshi standing at the end of the hall, but she’s not letting him get away this time. She chases after him. She’s like, who the hell are you? What are you doing here? He doesn’t say a lot. And he asks about the date and the time of her call.
00:43:31.23
Rhys
Um, and it turns out that it’s going to take place tomorrow at 10 30.
00:43:36.31
Rhys
He has Yoko’s phone, which honestly, um Hiroshi really kind of looks like the murderer here, you know,
00:43:45.30
Stephen Schneider
Yes. I think that’s what he was going for is what I took it as. Cause he really seemed to be the creeper that, you know, and what’s going on. Yeah.
00:43:54.71
Rhys
he’s got the, he’s got the phone.
00:43:54.70
Stephen Schneider
And he knows a lot.
00:43:57.18
Rhys
He knows about the candy. um
00:44:02.16
Rhys
and so that’s what the red ball is. It is. It is a piece of candy.
00:44:05.79
Stephen Schneider
This is huge candy too. Jeez. Yeah.
00:44:07.67
Rhys
Yeah. Big, big candy. um So the guy pulls out another phone. It’s his sister’s phone. She died in a fire. um And she had, again, a call like this. So they look.
00:44:22.28
Rhys
And what happens is, like, when Yoko dies, her phone dials a number. But it’s not her friend’s number. It dials a different number. And same thing with the with his sister. When she died, her phone dialed a number.
00:44:37.03
Rhys
It wasn’t the next person on the list. It was a different number. And so they’re trying to track down where do these phone calls go? um it turns out they go to a hospital.
00:44:51.54
Rhys
um And it’s actually not even really a hospital. They go to this hospital and they’re asking this lady. And she’s like, that was the number of the old hospital where we used to work.
00:45:00.34
Stephen Schneider
oh the trope of the old abandoned hospital.
00:45:04.40
Rhys
Yes.
00:45:04.75
Stephen Schneider
I get off my bingo card.
00:45:06.49
Rhys
Yes. um And so Yoko is trying to make, you know, i Yumi’s trying to make associations like has Yoko ever been to this hospital? She’s like, nope.
00:45:17.44
Rhys
So it’s not necessarily the hospital. It’s something else.
00:45:22.57
Rhys
Uh, the, while they’re sitting there thinking about it, you have a promo for the live broadcast of Natsuki’s exorcism shows up on TV. Um, and Yumi’s like, I’m going to go see her. And she gets up and leaves the building. And as she’s leaving the building, there’s that compressed air sound.
00:45:38.75
Rhys
And she stops and freaks out because she makes the connection. She heard it when Kenji fell.
00:45:44.26
Stephen Schneider
Yes.
00:45:44.57
Rhys
Um, but it turns out it’s somebody in the vestibule learning how to use an asthma inhaler.
00:45:49.50
Stephen Schneider
Yeah.
00:45:51.60
Rhys
One more puzzle piece.
00:45:51.63
Stephen Schneider
And, and um one thing I noticed with the, the, the broadcast there, the news things as they come up there, they’re, a graphic look on the broadcast is so different than the way our stuff looked.
00:46:06.73
Stephen Schneider
They were like the the comic book starred explosions with reds and blues and, you know, very neon striking almost, you know, we have more generic professional,
00:46:12.51
Rhys
Yeah.
00:46:17.63
Rhys
Yeah.
00:46:19.00
Stephen Schneider
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
00:46:19.90
Rhys
yeah
00:46:20.33
Stephen Schneider
It was a very different look and feel. Everything felt like, whoo, you know, which, which I guess, you know, is why the manga that they have are so popular.
00:46:25.33
Rhys
Yeah.
00:46:31.37
Rhys
Looks that way.
00:46:31.61
Stephen Schneider
That’s, you know, yeah, exactly.
00:46:33.58
Rhys
Yeah.
00:46:33.60
Stephen Schneider
Yeah, very cultural.
00:46:35.50
Rhys
Yumi and Hiroshi then go to see this weird little guy who seems to be a mortician. Maybe. i don’t know. He kind of walks hunched and he’s got all kinds of dead people on photographs in his, in his computer.
00:46:47.36
Rhys
um And so they’re at,
00:46:47.70
Stephen Schneider
yeah And he said they send them to him. i mean, he was, he was really creepy. Yeah.
00:46:53.39
Rhys
so they’re asking about asthma deaths and he finds one of someone named mimiko who died. um her mother’s name was Marie. um and, and so nobody knows where Marie went. She disappeared after mimiko died. Um, and mimiko died of an asthma attack, apparently in a house all by herself.
00:47:16.60
Rhys
The guy also takes, you know that’s, that’s the information from this scene. The guy also takes a picture of Yumi and, of, ah Hiroshi, just to have him on file.
00:47:26.88
Stephen Schneider
and And that was creepy too.
00:47:27.07
Rhys
and
00:47:28.69
Stephen Schneider
Cause he’s holding the camera up like right in their face for like 30 seconds.
00:47:30.01
Rhys
like
00:47:33.31
Stephen Schneider
And they’re like, as if it’s not even happening, they’re not looking, they’re ignoring it not acting like they’re ignoring it. Just yeah that was a weird thing too.
00:47:41.72
Rhys
He does this cool thing with the phones in this next scene where you have Yumi calling Natsumi to tell her not to do the show, but you have the producers on… on the cutaway scenes on the phones talking to other people.
00:47:55.55
Rhys
So it looks almost like Yumi’s calling them, but then you get really quickly that she’s not, these are two completely different conversations.
00:47:59.34
Stephen Schneider
Yeah. Yeah.
00:48:04.03
Stephen Schneider
yeah
00:48:06.16
Rhys
It turns out that Hiroshi’s sister who died to the burns worked at the children’s clinic where Mimi co was, um, ah Her little sister Nanako had been there several times for things like swallowing tacks or burns on the upper thigh or cuts on their arms.
00:48:28.75
Rhys
And um they’re like, and then Mimiko had been there several times for asthma attacks um nine times in the month of July.
00:48:39.97
Rhys
So they’re going to go talk to someone about that. Just about then Hiroshi gets this phone call that he’s been fired. He’s like, okay, well I quit.
00:48:48.32
Stephen Schneider
yeah
00:48:49.54
Rhys
Like so deadpan, like fine, whatever.
00:48:53.15
Stephen Schneider
Right.
00:48:55.31
Rhys
um They’re talking with a doctor and um Yumi lands on the whole thing of man Mount Manchusen syndrome by proxy where the mother Marie must have been hurting these girls to get attention.
00:49:08.60
Stephen Schneider
Which, which I think ah is known a lot more nowadays than it was 20, 30 years ago.
00:49:15.46
Rhys
Yeah.
00:49:15.70
Stephen Schneider
So that was kind of interesting.
00:49:17.73
Rhys
Munchhausen. Munchhausen. Why is it so hard for me to do? I don’t know. ah Technically, there’s a rumor that ah Marie had actually just stood there and watched Mimiko die of her asthma attack, which was a shame because she was so good with her sister.
00:49:34.24
Rhys
um They go back to the police. The police like, we can’t help you. we can’t We can’t solve a crime that hasn’t happened. Um, Hiroshi points out if you guys had ever actually done your job in the first place, this wouldn’t have happened. And then he points out that he knows about the candy and the cops like quit trying to be a police officer and just mind your own business.
00:49:54.93
Rhys
So.
00:49:55.74
Stephen Schneider
the The cops were definitely throwbacks to like the seventies cops.
00:49:59.84
Rhys
Oh yeah. Um, it’s time for the broadcast. Hiroshi says he’ll go to the studio by himself. Yumi’s like, no, that’s not happening. He’s like, go stay with your parents. She’s like, I haven’t seen my parents since I left high school.
00:50:12.74
Stephen Schneider
Hint.
00:50:12.81
Rhys
um And yeah, the issue just gets dropped right there. um But yeah, it’s that, it’s that hint for what comes later.
00:50:25.44
Rhys
Yeah. This whole scene where Natsumi is getting ushered through the hall. And this was really funny. Make sure you get the mic on her. And she’s already wearing a mic, but the guy walks up um and Yumi’s trying to get to her and security guards won’t let her.
00:50:38.35
Rhys
um And then you have like this back section where they’re, where they’re doing the production and they’re cutting from scenes and counting down. and you cut away to the cops who are going to watch the show. And the one cops like really into it. And the old,
00:50:51.88
Rhys
curmudgeon is sitting there smoking a cigarette, eating ramen. I’m like, could they have made you be any less healthy in this scene?
00:51:00.60
Stephen Schneider
yeah
00:51:04.08
Rhys
Um, kind way to the cops about whether to watch this. Oh no, we already did it back to the show. Um, their television show seems to be kind of trashy as well.
00:51:15.17
Rhys
It really is a bunch of like talking heads, arguing a amongst each other. ah
00:51:20.62
Stephen Schneider
it seemed very contrived a lot like our reality TV shows.
00:51:24.42
Rhys
Yes. You have this exorcist who’s doing there, you know, standing there. Then the phone starts to ring and the producer’s like, Hey, isn’t that a little over the top? And you know, the production staff’s like, we’re not doing that.
00:51:38.73
Rhys
um And we get to see what the exorcist really can do. He like starts praying a lot, burning a bunch of stuff, but it really doesn’t do much because all of a sudden there’s this massive gust of wind.
00:51:49.64
Rhys
He gets his ass thrown clear across the studio through a wall.
00:51:53.11
Stephen Schneider
Right. Yeah. He just lost a little bit of credibility there.
00:51:55.95
Rhys
Yes. um And then we see this ghostly figure seemingly crawling out of the shadows on the back wall. It turns out only we can see it and only the cameras can see it.
00:52:07.78
Rhys
Actual.
00:52:07.78
Stephen Schneider
Which I thought was pretty cool. Another technological, you know, almost a vampire thing.
00:52:12.68
Rhys
Which means that would have broadcast like all the people watching it would have seen it.
00:52:14.93
Stephen Schneider
Yeah.
00:52:18.81
Rhys
This dead
00:52:18.95
Stephen Schneider
And of course, then that makes it seem faked, you know, to the broadcast audience.
00:52:27.68
Rhys
Yeah, it… I don’t know. This dead hand grabs her and starts to twist her arms and stuff. And just twist her around, she’s screaming, until it, like, rips her head off.
00:52:40.03
Stephen Schneider
Yeah. One of the most horrific looking deaths in a movie in a long time.
00:52:44.54
Rhys
Yeah, yeah, because you have, like, the dead body taking, like, three steps before it falls over, and the head’s lying in the foreground, and a candy ring falls out of its mouth.
00:52:52.98
Stephen Schneider
yeah A lot of good shots with multiple layers of things going on throughout the whole movie.
00:53:00.13
Rhys
Yeah. And the candy rolls over, stops right at Yumi’s feet and her phone starts to ring. And her message is just her going, why, why?
00:53:13.34
Rhys
um and Hiroshi throws her phone in the fish tank. Doesn’t even ask.
00:53:16.71
Stephen Schneider
yeah
00:53:18.06
Rhys
He’s just like, bloop.
00:53:20.09
Stephen Schneider
Yeah. Like that’s really going to help there.
00:53:24.03
Rhys
Yeah.
00:53:24.76
Stephen Schneider
Poor fish.
00:53:26.55
Rhys
Um, at her apartment, um, He’s telling her, you know, you can, should have your family come over. She’s like, it’s all useless. Everything’s useless. There’s no escape. He’s like, I can fix this.
00:53:38.66
Rhys
And she says, we have 16 hours.
00:53:42.35
Rhys
Then he notices that she has burn marks on her arm, burn scars. And he’s like, where’d that come from? And we finally get the whole peephole toenail clipping story.
00:53:56.19
Rhys
Her mother was abusive. Um, and we just sit there like cutting her nails and called her and told her to go check on grandma.
00:54:07.60
Stephen Schneider
Yeah, we got multi levels of abuse right here.
00:54:10.91
Rhys
Yeah. So she goes to check on grandma and looks through the people and grandma has hung herself.
00:54:17.83
Stephen Schneider
Well, it it looks like grandma hung herself.
00:54:20.91
Rhys
Grandma is hung. Let’s put it that way.
00:54:22.05
Stephen Schneider
Yeah, grandma is hung. Yeah, that’s yeah.
00:54:25.28
Rhys
Um, and she starts screaming and her mom and a rage comes over and just starts burning so so her cigarette into her arm. Um, and then the flashback ends with a clipping of the toenail. And then she’s like wrapped up in it and freaking out in the real world of the present world.
00:54:42.60
Rhys
And he’s there like, it’s okay. It’s okay. I’ve got you.
00:54:45.80
Stephen Schneider
and And she does say that she tried her she tried to talk up against her mother and her grandmother protected her.
00:54:54.32
Rhys
Yeah.
00:54:54.33
Stephen Schneider
So you really like that.
00:54:54.52
Rhys
Yeah.
00:54:55.74
Stephen Schneider
You know, that’s why this happened.
00:54:58.42
Rhys
So they go to Marie and Mimiko’s old apartment and the guy who’s letting them in is like, you can leave your shoes on because we’re going to have the floors redone, which I thought was a nice little nod.
00:55:08.85
Stephen Schneider
Yes.
00:55:11.54
Rhys
They go in, they’re looking through everything. There’s a torn up photograph. You can get all the pieces together. You can see Marie, you can see Nanako, but you can’t find Mimiko’s face anywhere.
00:55:23.59
Rhys
Um, there’s this hissing sound because Hiroshi found an inhaler. And then suddenly there’s this figure in an overhead cupboard, which freaks you me out. You know, well it would freak me out too.
00:55:34.66
Rhys
I’m
00:55:35.10
Stephen Schneider
Yeah. Oh, sorry. Wrong movie. I got to go over to the grudge.
00:55:38.70
Rhys
Yeah. Yeah. Uh, she like falls down and he comes in and he looks in the cover and doesn’t find anything, but he finds a digital videotape recorder.
00:55:48.08
Stephen Schneider
And not only that, but this figure or whatever, it was crawling back, you know, it was in the whole cabinet. But when you open it, it’s full.
00:55:54.64
Rhys
Into the cupboard.
00:55:56.28
Stephen Schneider
There’s no room in there, know?
00:55:56.43
Rhys
Yeah. Yeah. He takes out the digital video camera recorder and opens it, but there’s nothing in it. I just thought, wow.
00:56:06.13
Stephen Schneider
You know why?
00:56:06.46
Rhys
and know
00:56:07.62
Stephen Schneider
That’s because they missed a side quest earlier to go find the tape.
00:56:11.45
Rhys
That’s right. If they would have done that, everyone unlocked something special when you fight the boss.
00:56:14.63
Stephen Schneider
Yes.
00:56:15.30
Rhys
But it turns out the little sister Nanako is still alive. She’s at this group home for orphan children. um Hiroshi tries to talk to her, but she doesn’t speak.
00:56:26.03
Rhys
She’s got this teddy bear in her lap. She’s listening to its heart with a stethoscope. um And the woman at the home points out that her mother, Marie, hasn’t contacted her in at least six months. um And then when you press the bear’s belly, it plays this creepy song, which is the music that the ringtone on the phones comes from.
00:56:43.99
Stephen Schneider
Yes.
00:56:44.23
Rhys
lady says it’s from a television show, a kid’s show. He tries to aggressively get Nanako to tell him where her mother is and realizes that was wrong because she’s not suddenly going to be able to talk.
00:56:54.88
Stephen Schneider
your So at this point, I’m picturing the like dispossessed spirit of the little girl. She can’t talk. And so her spirit has gone out to get revenge on everybody and she’s in control of all. That’s where I was going at this point.
00:57:10.89
Rhys
okay because the movie is definitely leaning towards Marie as the one who did all of this. She’s a horrible person, but Steve wasn’t falling for that.
00:57:15.99
Stephen Schneider
Which I figured was, yeah, I figured that was the misdirection, but.
00:57:20.71
Rhys
Yeah. um Yumi is ah trying to find her at the hospital. The nurses point out that they spent a lot of time at the old hospital before everyone moved.
00:57:36.12
Rhys
So Yumi wants to go to the old site and finds out the whole old hospital was there.
00:57:42.08
Stephen Schneider
Of course.
00:57:42.24
Rhys
So, yeah. So she calls Hiroshi and she’s like, I’m going. And he’s like, I’ll meet you there. actually you should go home. And she’s like, no, I’m not going to go home. So she’s trying to find her way into this creepy hospital.
00:57:56.33
Rhys
um She turns this corner and finds a door with a chain, but the chain’s not fastened. And now at this point, there’s about 45 minutes left in this film.
00:58:06.83
Stephen Schneider
Yeah. You’re like, whoa, what is going to happen? that I was like, did Tubi have like some stuff at the end it just recorded extra or something, you know?
00:58:16.89
Rhys
Yeah. She almost chickens out, but then she hears a phone ring. So she decides to go inside.
00:58:25.14
Stephen Schneider
Of course.
00:58:26.53
Rhys
amazing i don’t shouldn’t say amazingly enough. I don’t know enough about Japanese culture, but the place still has power to it.
00:58:33.05
Stephen Schneider
Yeah. Yeah. But, you know.
00:58:35.62
Rhys
And right here, you really could just go insert traditional haunted hospital movie here. Because that’s what it was.
00:58:43.20
Stephen Schneider
Yes. Stock footage.
00:58:45.35
Rhys
Yeah. there’s noises that happen in the distance. She walks past a mirror. You can see a girl in white walking behind her in the reflection. um She’s trying to find this ringing phone and the phone seemed, the ringing seems to be coming from everywhere all at once.
00:59:01.59
Rhys
um She sees a man walking through the hall, thinks it’s Hiroshi, chases after him um and finds an examination pile, an examination pile examination table.
00:59:13.38
Rhys
And the phone is there complete with a pile of maggoty bile with maybe some red candies in it. um And she shrieks and heads out in the hall.
00:59:23.67
Stephen Schneider
Yeah, that was really disturbing to look at There’s some, yeah, gross stuff in here.
00:59:28.83
Rhys
Yeah. ah The lights go out and there’s this long haired figure upside down starting to stalk her.
00:59:35.21
Stephen Schneider
That was a great little scene, I must say.
00:59:35.30
Rhys
This.
00:59:38.03
Rhys
Well, and it’s for us. It’s not for her because she never sees it.
00:59:40.46
Stephen Schneider
yeah Yeah, but yeah that’s one of the ones that cracked me up too, because she’s super scared. She’s alone. So she just sits there and doesn’t move and lets it come up behind her after like five minutes in slow motion almost almost here.
00:59:54.74
Rhys
Yeah. So she turns around and it disappears and then hands appear on the side of her. um and like fingers bend all the way backwards and start to break.
01:00:05.77
Rhys
She starts running away, shrieking. She finds herself at this spot. This is the worst part of the entire movie. In my opinion, find yourself at this spot where there’s doors all around and these hands are putting out fetuses in jars through the doors.
01:00:21.19
Stephen Schneider
And it’s scraping over the cement. And that you’re right. That was extremely disturbing. The whole thing just happening over and over. That’s enough to drive you to madness.
01:00:31.69
Rhys
So that’s not what I meant by the worst part of the film. My whole thought was, what does this have to do with anything?
01:00:36.95
Stephen Schneider
Well, yeah.
01:00:37.17
Rhys
I mean, it’s a creepy image. I get it. But like nobody’s aborting anything. Nobody was pregnant. One of them ends up in her lap and she freaks out and throws it and it falls and breaks and she runs off. She crawls off. I’m sorry. She doesn’t run off. She’s starting crawl down the hall.
01:00:56.31
Rhys
She can’t get herself to her feet. Something grabs her by the ankles and drags her backwards.
01:01:01.39
Stephen Schneider
Yes.
01:01:02.12
Rhys
She manages to grab it on a door frame. One of her boots comes off. um And she looks up and an overhead cupboard has a figure in it that slams the cupboard door shut.
01:01:14.36
Rhys
And Hiroshi shows up. And so they’re trying to leave. She’s obviously freaked out. He’s like, okay, we’ll get out of here. They leave and the door where the chain was not locked, the chain has now been locked.
01:01:29.08
Stephen Schneider
yes
01:01:29.30
Rhys
Hiroshi reaches out to try and get the chain off the door and a dead hand on the outside grabs his arm. He pulls his hand back. Then like the door just buckles in as this giant face appears in the middle of the door.
01:01:42.65
Stephen Schneider
Yeah, yeah you you mentioned about the jars. You’re right. There were a couple times in the whole movie that there were a couple things that happened that didn’t seem to fit. So it may you know may have been his misdirection, red herring type things, or just trying to do some of the horror tropes, things that, yeah.
01:01:59.32
Rhys
Elevate the spookiness.
01:02:01.07
Stephen Schneider
Yeah.
01:02:02.63
Rhys
They retreat further into the hospital. Hiroshi grabs an axe. And while they’re hiding, we hear the ringtone again. And there is suddenly a phone on the examination table right by Yumi. um And in text, it says, you will die in 56 seconds.
01:02:18.17
Rhys
55, 54. fifty four It keeps a running timer. um Hiroshi goes over to hold her because he said he would be with her when the time comes. While he’s doing that, he looks around and he sees what looks like almost like ah a vat or a tub that’s been boarded up.
01:02:37.11
Rhys
And there is a dead hand coming out holding a phone, which is actively making a phone call.
01:02:42.37
Stephen Schneider
Yeah, that was pretty creepy too.
01:02:45.21
Rhys
He realizes it’s Marie’s phone. So he goes over, grabs the phone, cancels the call. Yumi’s phone goes quiet. She survives. She beats the curse.
01:02:57.14
Stephen Schneider
We think who knows there’s 20 minutes left.
01:02:58.35
Rhys
Well. Yeah, right. There’s still 20 minutes to go. And technically she did beat the curse because we have to do some kind of funny time manipulation here at the end, actually.
01:03:08.84
Stephen Schneider
Yes.
01:03:10.49
Rhys
Hiroshi goes over to the boarded up section, finds the body of Marie in this advanced state of decomposition. This was another nod to a film called Blackwater. um
01:03:20.01
Stephen Schneider
Oh yeah. Yeah.
01:03:21.15
Rhys
Yeah. where So I thought that was really cool. Nice little nice little ah homage put in there. Yomi goes to take a look and points out that she must have wanted to be found.
01:03:34.73
Rhys
And here’s where you know the whole Western thing comes in. Oh, she wanted to be found. She’s found. Everything’s going to fine now. um But the corpse’s arm suddenly animates, grabs her by the hair and sits up and leans in close to her face.
01:03:48.79
Rhys
Hiroshi drags Yumi away, grabs the axe, puts himself between this entity and Yumi. And as it approaches, he takes a swing with the axe, which does nothing.
01:03:59.18
Rhys
I mean, it hits it, but it doesn’t slow it down at all.
01:03:59.65
Stephen Schneider
Right.
01:04:03.01
Rhys
So he decides
01:04:03.09
Stephen Schneider
And the this walking corpse was so cool because parts of it are like dripping and falling off as it’s walking, which if it was burnt like that to that degree and still kind of fresh, it might be exactly what happens.
01:04:10.92
Rhys
yeah
01:04:17.68
Stephen Schneider
And it was really disturbing and it just kept dripping and falling. Yeah.
01:04:22.50
Rhys
Dropping bits and pieces. um Hiroshi grabs Yumi. They’re going to run out the door and there’s that big blast of air in the studio. It happens here now, except it blows Hiroshi out of the room.
01:04:37.24
Rhys
And closes the door. So now Yumi is trapped in with the corpse. um It continues to approach her. She loses her legs. She’s like trying to crawl away.
01:04:48.53
Rhys
it keeps getting closer and closer. Out in the hall, Hiroshi hears his little sister. And he turns and her ghost is standing in the hall. And she says, there is a separate sky for every one of us.
01:05:03.16
Rhys
And then it fades away.
01:05:05.03
Stephen Schneider
Yeah, that was like, okay, Miyagi-san, you know, but I must say the ghosts, when they appear in this, the way they made them look like they’re fuzzy, they’re indistinct and and almost brighter than the surrounding scene.
01:05:19.45
Rhys
Yeah.
01:05:20.90
Stephen Schneider
I thought it was a pretty good effect.
01:05:22.41
Rhys
Oh, it was. It absolutely was. um Meanwhile, you have Yumi and the zombie. um And all of a sudden, the zombie turns into Marie, the mother. um And it’s reaching out for Yumi, who just hopelessly watches. And it bounces back between ghost and zombie, ghost and zombie. And it grabs her by the throat.
01:05:42.25
Rhys
But it didn’t seem to be choking her. It just like grabs her by the throat. um And then Yumi just like has basically a complete mental breakdown and says, mother, I understand. i won’t want to run away. I’ll be a good girl.
01:05:56.33
Rhys
And now you’re like, oh, she’s like referring, she’s like speaking to her own mother.
01:06:01.42
Stephen Schneider
Yeah.
01:06:02.71
Rhys
um and
01:06:02.82
Stephen Schneider
And in in many, many ways, this was actually the most disturbing part after everything else that happened, you know?
01:06:10.45
Rhys
Because she takes the hands off her neck and just gives the zombie a big old hug.
01:06:15.11
Stephen Schneider
Yeah, she’s lost it.
01:06:15.68
Rhys
And In my mind, I’m like, the zombie actually looks confused. It’s like, what?
01:06:25.81
Rhys
But it seems to resolve two issues. um Marie is now, again, an inert corpse. She’s just lying there. um Seems to have found peace. And Yumi seems to have found more peace with herself with regards to her relationship with her mother as well.
01:06:38.92
Stephen Schneider
And hey, look at the time. We’ve still got plenty of movie left.
01:06:41.21
Rhys
There’s still 20 minutes. This is when things pick up.
01:06:43.01
Stephen Schneider
yeah
01:06:44.20
Rhys
What in the world?
01:06:45.66
Stephen Schneider
Yeah.
01:06:47.36
Rhys
The police say the body’s been there for six months and the victims of all those kids, their phone numbers were stored on the dead mother’s phone. i don’t know how you use that to explain anything.
01:06:58.94
Stephen Schneider
ah yeah Well, you know, cops in horror movies can never explain it because they’re so based in reality. None of it ever makes sense to them. So they always you know grasp the the one little thing they can.
01:07:11.39
Rhys
Well, the police officer goes over and tells Hiroshi they contacted the group home where The girl is, and they found something they want to show him. The group home, not the police.
01:07:23.15
Rhys
And so um Hiroshi and the crotchety old police officer get in one car and go this way. um And another police officer takes Yumi home. And we’re going to do that whole pacing thing. or We’re going to bounce around between two shots.
01:07:37.87
Rhys
um Yumi taking a shower, washing her hair. If you’ve never seen J-horror, then this might be a surprise to you. But you know she like goes to rinse her hair, and there’s like a figure standing behind her.
01:07:53.60
Rhys
That happens in a couple shots. We’ll set that off to the side here.
01:07:57.01
Stephen Schneider
you
01:07:58.02
Rhys
We’re at the group home, and they have they found a tape in Nanako’s stuff. And so they’re going to play the tape. And basically what happens is Miyake…
01:08:12.04
Rhys
Mimiko comes in um takes her sister, sits her down by the wall, pulls out a knife and slices her sister’s arm open.
01:08:24.04
Rhys
ah The mother comes in, Marie comes in and sees what Mimiko has done to her little sister. And she’s like, you’ve been the one who’s been doing this the whole time. um Back in the apartment, Yumi’s out of the shower. She’s drying her hair and the clock starts to go backwards.
01:08:40.44
Stephen Schneider
Yes.
01:08:43.49
Rhys
In the group home, the little girl comes in. Hiroshi asks her to forgive him um for being loud that one time, I guess. um And then he looks, she’s got this purse and he looks inside her purse and she’s got small red candies.
01:08:59.14
Rhys
And the girl who hasn’t spoken and
01:09:00.23
Stephen Schneider
Not small. They’re freaking baseballs.
01:09:02.27
Rhys
yeah um the girl who hasn’t spoken in six months is like, every time her sister would hurt her, she’d give her candy and say, get well soon. So that was okay.
01:09:13.21
Stephen Schneider
Right. I think the curmudgeon cop is the only not messed up character in this whole movie.
01:09:20.44
Rhys
That is Steve.
01:09:22.44
Stephen Schneider
Yeah.
01:09:23.75
Rhys
On the videotape, the mother pushes Mimiko away, grabs the little girl and leaves with Mimiko on the ground, having an asthma attack. They were so good about it. They even turned her lips blue for the scene.
01:09:33.48
Stephen Schneider
Yeah.
01:09:33.99
Rhys
It was like, oh, ah she’s calling for her mother, but her mother is done with her and walks out with the little girl. Yumi’s still trying to blow dry her hair. The clock is going backwards faster and faster and faster.
01:09:48.59
Rhys
Um, Hiroshi calls the police and tells him it wasn’t Marie that was killing everybody. It was Mimi co they’re like, okay. And so he’s trying to get to you, me in time to s save her.
01:10:01.34
Rhys
Um, and then you have this cute little scene where the little girl offers the police detective, one of the candies. He’s like, uh, no, thanks.
01:10:11.18
Rhys
Hiroshi ends up at Yumi’s apartment. He’s beating on the door and calling for her, but you don’t see him. You hear him. And Yumi walks over and all of a sudden he starts to repeat himself over and over again.
01:10:23.57
Rhys
um So she summons up the courage to look through the peephole to see what’s going on. And this giant spike comes ramming through the peephole. She manages to get out of the way.
01:10:33.58
Stephen Schneider
like silver Terminator.
01:10:35.44
Rhys
Yes, yeah that’s exactly it. Um, Yumi turns away from the door to see Mimi goes ghost sitting on the couch, acting like it’s eating popcorn or something. Um, and then as the ghost approached her, she’s like, why, why? Which is exactly what her voicemail said.
01:10:52.64
Rhys
And she screams. Hiroshi’s outside the house. He hears the screams, runs upstairs only to find Yumi sitting on the couch. He’s like, are you okay?
01:11:04.06
Rhys
And she’s like, what’s wrong? And he’s like, where’s Mimi co. Um, And he’s like, are you really okay? She’s like, yeah. And so he goes to give her this big hug of relief. And then suddenly he has this look on his face and they pan to the floor. You see blood dripping on the floor and he looks down to see that Yumi was holding a knife and has put it into his abdomen.
01:11:24.06
Rhys
She pulls it out and he takes a few steps back and just collapses on the floor.
01:11:28.47
Stephen Schneider
Yeah, there was the the collapse made me chuckle because it was so like old school ah theater production, bad acting. He just, boom, drops to his knees.
01:11:40.31
Stephen Schneider
Yeah.
01:11:40.49
Rhys
Yeah.
01:11:41.45
Stephen Schneider
yeah
01:11:42.60
Rhys
He looks in the mirror and sees it’s not Yumi, but Mimiko in the reflection. um And she looks through the mirror at him. and then he looks up at Yumi and she says, I’ll get you to the hospital.
01:11:57.66
Rhys
Then Hiroshi finds himself… I mean, he kind of fades to black. So you’re thinking he passed out, finds himself in that, in Marie’s house. And he finds Mimiko’s body on the floor, having just collapsed from an asthma attack.
01:12:12.35
Rhys
He puts the inhaler in her mouth and pumps air into it. And she starts to revive.
01:12:17.64
Stephen Schneider
And right here, I’ll talk a little bit more about this in a minute, but right here I started going, there are levels of realms and time being manipulated here. Is he going to change the whole future by doing this as he’s dying or whatever? You know, I thought that was pretty interesting. I like that type of stuff.
01:12:36.32
Rhys
Yeah. And so this is a vision in his head. He’s sleeping in the hospital. he it’s very bare, stark white room. ah He kind of sits up a bit. Yumi is there with him and she walks over with a knife in her hand behind her back.
01:12:51.30
Rhys
um And she gets him to lay back down and leans down to kiss him and opens her mouth and a red candy comes out of her mouth and into his. And then she stands there and she’s got the knife in her hand. Like she’s watching.
01:13:05.23
Rhys
And then he just starts to eat the candy. And then Yumi smiles, laughs a bit. And then we get this scene of a blue sky with white clouds in it and roll credits.
01:13:17.99
Stephen Schneider
Yes. I was like, wait, what?
01:13:23.28
Stephen Schneider
It definitely, that the last 20 minutes changed the movie so much. And, and you got to really think about what’s going on. And I’m like, I’m going to have to watch this one again to catch everything maybe and figure it all out.
01:13:36.65
Rhys
Yeah. And for me, it was like he met Mimiko on that spiritual plane, almost like a test and he helps her.
01:13:42.45
Stephen Schneider
Yes.
01:13:46.51
Rhys
And then here in the physical plane, is he going to actually be loyal and okay?
01:13:46.53
Stephen Schneider
Yes.
01:13:52.91
Rhys
Or is he going to spit that candy out and like reject it all, but he accepts the candy. And so she does not plunge the knife into his chest.
01:14:02.53
Stephen Schneider
Or he actually was dying or dead. And this was, which realm are you going into? Which blue sky are you getting?
01:14:11.03
Rhys
Oh, yeah, yeah That’s a good one, too.
01:14:12.89
Stephen Schneider
And see, this is actually what I loved about the movie the absolute most is it when you look at it, look at all the little clues, it’s really talking about other realms of reality. And like when you die, where you go and and are we in control of ourselves or are are we connected to other realms, other universes?
01:14:34.20
Stephen Schneider
ah in there. And the time thing bringing into it is like a level that you hardly to ever see in this stuff. Sci-fi always deals with timelines and jumping around, but this one actually had time going backwards.
01:14:40.27
Rhys
Yeah. Oh yeah.
01:14:46.01
Stephen Schneider
the The time went backwards to when Yumi was supposed to die and didn’t.
01:14:50.25
Rhys
Right.
01:14:50.82
Stephen Schneider
You know, so it it yeah, all of this was some almost sci-fi-ish thing. time thing, which I thought was like, wow, that’s deep as hell for one of these horror movies.
01:15:05.01
Rhys
Absolutely. there was and alternative ending. That was supposed to be kind of a post credit scene.
01:15:11.17
Stephen Schneider
oh
01:15:14.96
Rhys
And in the post credit scene, you have the exorcist in the hospital with his arms and legs and casts from being thrown through the wall. And he gets a phone call, a missed call.
01:15:28.12
Rhys
And it’s from three seconds in the future. And he’s like, huh? And so he looks at it. He’s like, huh? And like something big and heavy falls off a shelf and hits him on the head and kills him.
01:15:40.25
Rhys
But um he thought that was a little too silly to end such a serious film and in that manner. So, yeah.
01:15:48.02
Stephen Schneider
Agreed. I’d agree with him on that one. Yeah. So there we go. ah One missed call. the The original.
01:15:55.89
Rhys
Yes. um And that is actually a wrap from ah season five.
01:16:03.35
Stephen Schneider
Yeah. Yeah. we’re we got We made season five longer. It’s taken a bit.
01:16:08.23
Rhys
Fifteen episodes.
01:16:08.26
Stephen Schneider
um But it’s been a lot of great, you know, episodes, a lot of good movies to watch. so
01:16:15.62
Rhys
And what would ah season be if you didn’t have a bonus episode?
01:16:20.67
Stephen Schneider
Yes! Bonus episode time! What’s our bonus episode, Reese?
01:16:25.05
Rhys
um We are both big fans of one, Mr. Ty West. And he came out with a movie and then another and then another and called it a trilogy. And so we are going to look at X, Pearl, and Maxine as an overview as three separate films.
01:16:43.27
Stephen Schneider
Yeah. Yeah. So we’ll have that coming up. Might take a little bit to get to it, but we’ve got some side dishes coming up and then we’ve got the next season shortly thereafter too.
01:16:52.06
Rhys
Season six, knocking on the door, leaving a message on your phone.
01:16:55.85
Stephen Schneider
Yeah. Yeah. I’m not answering that phone anymore.
01:17:00.40
Stephen Schneider
All right, man. Good, up good ah episode. Good movie. I like this one a lot.
01:17:04.71
Rhys
Awesome. That was good one.
01:17:05.83
Stephen Schneider
So. Yep. All right. Well, Hey, you have a great day and we will get back to our tie West, uh, viewing, uh, and talk about that soon.
01:17:15.41
Rhys
Awesome. See you, Steve.
