Takashi Miike’s 2003 original was a hit in Asia without being a classic, but tapped into the modern obsession with mobile phones, so a Stateside reworking was inevitable.

Pretty, young Beth (Sossamon), a psychology student, begins to suspect otherworldly forces are at work when two of her friends die in fatal accidents.

One of them, Leann, played Beth a phone message seemingly left by Leann herself two days in the future speaking her final words.

As other friends start getting one missed calls with similarly freaky messages, Beth teams up with Detective Andrews (Burns), whose sister seems to be the first in the deadly mobile chain letter, to solve the mystery.

Could it have something to do with a mute girl, whose abusive mother perished in a hospital fire?

No worse than any other J-horror remake, One Missed Call is actually less a travesty of its source material than Gore Verbinski’s execrable Ring rehash.

After a laugh-out-loud shock opening and early exposition crammed dialogue, the film settles into the familiar Asian horror groove of buried scandals, spectral visions, race against time deadlines (literally) and gruesome demises.

Only, the demises are not gruesome enough. Contracted to deliver a PG-13, director Valette ditches the enjoyably grisly Final Destination style deaths of Taskashi Miike’s film, including limb loss and decapitation, and the original's showstopper, a reality TV exorcism of the cursed phone and its owner, is here disconnected before it gets going.

Some humour remains, apparently these characters would favour death over losing their mobiles, and the 48 hour or less call-back time makes this curse more efficient than Ring’s one week later killer.

But, this is just a Nokia off of yet another Eastern chiller, simply so people don’t have to read the screen. Maybe if subtitles were available in text speak audiences might not run screaming for the wrong reasons?

Rob Daniel