Starts off with an appearance of a more constructive story, but soon in the first 30 mintues or so we see that there's the typical horror scenario:
protagonist which for the entirety of the movie stays in a place we slowly get to know throughout the movie, and a villain, which in this case makes the movie a slasher, shows his presence after half of the movie's duration passed.
It's very easy to go with this type of flow in horror but it's also easier to make mistakes by making it more bland and boring in the second half of the movie, after we get to know all the character and ambientation aspects during its introduction.
I think the story is concise but refined to such a point where almost 2 hours of its simplicity doesn't feel heavy, that's why I reccommend the movie; but that doesn't mean it's spectacular, hence my rating.
There's also some smaller things which I consider as mistakes, but not that severe to such a point where the rating goes down because of them:
-One mistake being, that the villain can go in and out of the gas station to put the people he captured in a single room, but he can do so without the door chime making noise, that would mean that he can do as he pleases because unless our protagonist sees him phisically entering the store, she can't know he entered it because of his "superpower" to silence door chimes. I could judge this not only as a mistake but also as a plot hole which serves to fulfill the story's purpose and make the villain 'scarier', but the fact that Mary sees hallucinations, it could play a part in this.
And by the way this also happens in other slasher movies where for the sake of making a killer actually kill a large amount of people in a short amount of time (something that would be impossible in real life), they give them superpowers where they can teleport or be invisible without making it obvious to the one who's watching the movie.
-Another very small mistake which happened during the movie's shooting is around an hour and a half, when our protagonist Mary goes back into the gas station and in one shot she takes the keys with her after closing the door, while in another the keys are left in the lock. Again this is a very small mistake and it's not noticeable at all.
Hypnotic is a so-so movie, it starts with a mystery which I found being inspired from the story of Elisa Lam (Hotel Cecil), I was intrigued then but this mystery lasts very little because not even 5 minutes in we find it being caused by an evil hypnotisation, a very Sci-Fi theme which I think should be added in the tags, this hypnotisation idea could have transmuted to a very good horror but it very quickly loses its charm, the writing is very superficial and I think in better hands this idea could have made a much better film but oh well...
The movie is also full of plot twists which do not work at all, especially the last one where the girl wakes up in the detective's hands but we come to discover that it's actually Meade, a powerful scene but very ineffective. The actors also I know have potential but not in this movie, it all seems too superficial and a moneygrab from the directors which are the ones that also made The Open House (also a negatively critiqued movie), I hope their third time is the charm.
This movie is good to watch till the hypnotised girl enters the detective's house to kill him, it all goes downhill from there with the "plot".
I don't want to say the movie is completely bad, actually there is a scene which hit me, when Doctor Meade enters Jenn's house making her remain still, that scene made me a bit uneasy.
I want to tag another review which I agree with https://www.imdb.com/review/rw7486768/?ref_=rw_urv
Very unsettling, especially in the last scenes, it has that classic J-Horror style which is not based on music but mostly on the creepiness of the actual scenes.
The movie started with a very interesting and real ideology, one thing very common to us as we all have mobile phones -soon or later someone had to make this concept into a Horror- but this turned out to be just repetitive and mostly boring deaths which felt like a chore sitting through. I felt no attachment to the actors even if Asian movies/shows usually have this as a priority, the song of the curse was scary when heard but it doesnt' have that classicality to it like the "ki ki ki, ma ma ma" from Friday the 13th or Halloween's theme which are now associated with horror, may be the director didn't actually want to let this movie be big and thus a classic, speaking of, I never heard of the director Takashi Miike before so I searched him up and saw that his main genre was Horror-Gore and this movie had nothing to do with that, which made this more or less feel like an experiment from him.
All in all "Chakushin Ari" (One Missed Call) is nothing special and the ending was just a total incomprehensible mess, not worth watching.
The film is all a satire that "throws a stone into the pond" to annoy other Horror movies, because apparently, Italians (but also viewers in general) don't like anything with this movie genre and we always have something to say about it, and it's true, that's how we are, and on the one hand it's good because we always manage to get closer - but never quite - to perfection thanks to criticism and past horror flops, and moreover I think that the horror genre is the most criticised of all, not because it sucks but because the fanbase of this genre is the most passionate. Some people hated horror and now they're forced to watch it just because it gained so much traction in the last years and with so many subgenres, there's something for everyone so I understand if they start to like it.
However, this movie had great potential, visually and auditorily, it's not bad, I remember some very captivating scenes like the one when they are in the house and all of a sudden this intense red comes out with the sound of the alarm in the background; or the green nocturnal setting of the camper area embraced by the darkness towards the forest, it's scary.. but I still agree with some reviewers that they wrote this plot just to gain more positive feedback.
8/10
I decided to watch this again after 2 years it came out because my mind completely erased everything about this movie.
I can't give it a 10 or even a 9 because for a psychological horror genre, the storyline is original but a bit weak, you can start to see where the movie is going in the first 30 minutes, and then it's just waiting for it to happen.
This movie is based on a racism and it wants to send the message that there's more happening in the real world and I like that, there's a good connection between that and the plot.
I love the story, it's very intriguing and it submerges you fully in the very first 10 minutes, its pace is very good, you can feel the tension for the main character forming and each scene has its importance, there are absolutely no fillers but as I said in the beginning it's a movie where you already know how the ending is going to look like from the start which is not a good thing especially for this genre.
The music also stands out a lot, it's absolutely perfect.
There's a major plot twist but again, you basically already know it's going to happen even before the scene with the photos in the cabinet which I would consider the turning point of the movie.
All in all, great movie, an absolute must watch for horror fans, I recommend you watch this even if you're not.
