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4 of 4 people found the following review helpful
Format:DVD|Amazon Verified Purchase
This Japanese film seems to have been the inspiration for the dire English horror comedy, When Evil Calls. But this one is definitely not meant to be funny; it not only features some seriously gruesome stuff, it covers serious topics such as the sexual exploitation of teenagers by adults, and the viciously competitive society of the Japanese high school. The basic premise is similar to that used in the Korean film Wishing Stairs, except that instead of climbing a particular staircase and making a wish, you dial a particular cellphone number at midnight and make a wish. After reciting a little rhyme (which unfortunately does become rather less impressive in English translation) you make your wish. In payment the Devil allegedly takes as many minutes from your life as the call lasts. Naturally, like any premium rate number, the calls last rather longer than the wishers expect, and inevitably result in death. Cue a number of high schoolers making wish calls and facing unexpectedly dire consequences. The effects are pretty good; I found the student characters reasonably sympathetic and well developed, and actually cared about what happened to them; the music was good too, and there was a nice twist at the end. But it doesn't satisfy ultimately for two reasons. One is that the story jumps backwards and forwards over time, for no apparent reason - other than possibly to try and cash in on the success of other Japanese horror flicks like Ju-On, which used this trick to good effect. Here it is just unnecessary and confusing, in spite of captions to tell you 'Two months ago', 'One week later', 'One month ago'. You find yourself fighting to remember which event comes at which point, which was not the case with Ju-On. The other is that the 'explanation' of the events - the history of the urban legend, the ultimate denouement of exactly who is behind it all - is not sufficiently developed. As in Ringu, you have characters trying to backtrack the horror to its source, and coming across traces, but there is too little information given, and in the end it would have been better not to bother rather than to rush it. Possibly this is a problem from the editing and not the script, so I will be looking out for an extended cut if one comes out. Worth a watch, though, for some excellent acting (though there is one player who shall remain nameless, who mistakes loudness for emotion), and some entertainingly nasty demises.
Format:DVD
A bit of an incoherent mess at times, End Call is an ok watch but has too many potentially good ideas which are under developed and the timeline jumps around like crazy, forwards back and present which seriously detracts from the viewers ability to follow sequential events and stunts story development.
A group of high school girls (again!) discover an urban legend concerning dialling a certain cell phone number at midnight which upon repeating a certain mantra will make the callers wish come true. This number is dodgier than an 0898 number in the back of a jazz mag so consequently there is a price to pay and this of course is where the horror element kicks in.
The characters were quite well developed and there was an interesting story about the involvement of one of the girls who worked within the sex industry but the filming process (or editing process) just made everything so disjointed that in relation to the cast I'm none too clear exactly what happened to who and when.
For me it wasn't quite an 18 more a 15 cert as I didn't think there was too much gore in it, one particularly nice bathroom scene though. Not very scary or gruesome and in some ways maybe more appropriately targeted at the audience it was portraying with the exception of the certificate rating awarded. Ok but much better Japanese and Asian horrors out there.
A group of high school girls (again!) discover an urban legend concerning dialling a certain cell phone number at midnight which upon repeating a certain mantra will make the callers wish come true. This number is dodgier than an 0898 number in the back of a jazz mag so consequently there is a price to pay and this of course is where the horror element kicks in.
The characters were quite well developed and there was an interesting story about the involvement of one of the girls who worked within the sex industry but the filming process (or editing process) just made everything so disjointed that in relation to the cast I'm none too clear exactly what happened to who and when.
For me it wasn't quite an 18 more a 15 cert as I didn't think there was too much gore in it, one particularly nice bathroom scene though. Not very scary or gruesome and in some ways maybe more appropriately targeted at the audience it was portraying with the exception of the certificate rating awarded. Ok but much better Japanese and Asian horrors out there.
Format:DVD
totally agree with the other reviewer so i won't repeat plot details etc suffice to say it's an ok little horror but the one thing i would note is it seems to be a very poor translation to dvd with some serious problems when it comes to dark tones i have also seen apartment 1303 which is released by same company and suffered from the same problems.
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