College student Beth Raymond's (Sossamon) friends are dying in droves. Terrified, Beth turns to Detective Jack Andrews (Burns) to help piece together the events that led to her friends' demise. One connective thread is discovered—each victim received an eerie message on their cell phone prior to their death. Each message contains the voice of the victim as she or he is being murdered. Now Beth has One Missed Call on her cell phone and just three days in which to solve the mystery of the voice messages and prevent her own death. Based upon the novel by Yasushi Akimoto. (Stacey Pendry)
Special features are limited to up-front previews.
The anamorphically enhanced 1.78:1 DVD shows a good sense of dimensionality, with nicely rendered black levels and shadow delineation. There are scenes that look flat with elevated black levels though. The picture occasionally is lacking with respect to resolution, with fine details looking somewhat soft on occasion. Color fidelity is fairly impressive, although there are moments when fleshtones have a slightly pinkish hue. Noise can be recognized at times, and compression artifacts are also noticeable. Edge enhancement is not a major problem. The VC-1-encoded Blu-ray Disc shows solid black levels and nicely balanced contrast, as well as good resolution. The image has a subtle haze shrouding it, though, which is somewhat distracting. (Danny Richelieu)
The Dolby® Digital 5.1-channel soundtrack can be fully engaging, with each of the channels incorporated nicely. There are many times, however, when the use of the surround channels is too limited for the action on-screen. Dynamic range is relatively limited, which is disappointing for the soundtrack, and dialogue occasionally sounds poorly integrated, spatially. The front stage is mixed well, and music is delivered well across the screen channels. The LFE channel is used nicely when needed, although deep bass is not a major part of the soundtrack. The Blu-ray Disc's Dolby TrueHD encoding provides impressive dynamic range and fidelity, but the surround channels are too often ignored. Dialogue integration is also noticeably off at times. (Danny Richelieu)