End Call Review

Disclaimer: Contains spoilers!

Plot Summary: A group of friends call a mysterious phone number said to grant your wishes in exchange for a portion of your life.

Review: Oh no, it's never a good sign when there's not even a wikipedia page for a movie! I've said it a hundred times at this point, but here's 101: this film wasted its potential. The plot isn't anything revolutionary, but there were some good ideas with a terrible execution; actually, at this point, anything having to do with cell phones is almost standard fare in Japan, but they tried to work with it. Where things went wrong was by never exploring the mythos behind the plot and instead focusing on the drama regarding the friends and their little love interests. In fact, so little of the premise is explained, you tend to forget you're supposed to be watching a horror movie.

The story is that there is some urban legend about calling a phone number and making a deal with the devil to have your wish come true. In exchange for your wish being granted, you lose life equal to the amount of time you remain on the line. Okay, right from the offset this is stupid because the phone calls are like a minute or two at most. Oh shit, I lost 2 minutes of my life! Fuck, I lost 90 minutes watching this movie! I suppose they claim your cell phone becomes permanently connected to the hotline or something as your life ticks away, but, still, wouldn't you have to be on the phone for years? None of this matters because there's a secondary condition anyway; apparently the devil can send out phone bills, and if you can't pay the bill you die. So with your life hanging in the balance, surely these girls are making life altering wishes that would benefit humanity, right? Of course not! They just want boyfriends! It gets dumber though--two of them want the same loser dude; seriously, you're fucking killing me here...the lovelorn Japan phenomenon strikes again. The format of the film's presentation is sort of all over the place as we jump in time often but to sum things up: the girls start off happy with their wishes until their lives fall apart from the phone bills. When the first girl dies it kind of sets off a chain reaction that leads to the demise of all the other girls. Along the way, we only have a few, faint hints at the supernatural aspect of the phone number such as a shadowy figure that appears on the screen, people forced against their will to do things, and some books move on their own; unfortunately, that's about it. There's random background chatter about the same thing happening at another school that some how connects to one of the girls' stepsister, but it's brushed over seriously without proper development; they act like this is some big twist, but if it is never explained, what is the audience supposed to be shocked by? Basically the film ends with all the girls dead, the love interests are dead, and it feels like everything was pointless. This could have easily been salvaged by changing the wishes to be less stupid, take away all the drama with the girls that eats up most of the scenes, have more to do with the creepy number, add some kind of antagonist even if it's just the shadowy figure (maybe lurking in the background), and, finally, do something--anything--to spice up the horror elements even if we have a damn, long-haired ghost woman.

The movie sounds much worse than it is, but I can't deny that I was disappointed when there was a lot to work with. It would have been cool if you had multiple wishes but the cost kept going up the bigger the wishes became, and the girls became corrupted by getting everything they wanted. Like have one wish for the idiotic boyfriend but then ask for their molesting teacher to die and so on and so forth until they end up unable to pay for their crimes, so to speak, and turning on each other. There definitely should have been a scene of this so-called devil coming to collect when one of the girls couldn't pay the bill. Oh well. I liked some of the ideas and the girls are dorky-cute, but little is explained, the direction of the story is misplaced, and the overall quality of production feels low. I'd say pass, but I would give a sequel a try if they decide to explore the tale of this stepsister or at least deal more with the phone number in general.

Notable Moment: When Mako commits suicide but inadvertently kills Mai by landing on her when Mako jumps from atop a hospital roof.

Final Rating: 5/10