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When college students receive voicemails of themselves talking, screaming and dying, they then start seeing crappy special effects--er, supernatural beings--and die shortly after. Hopefully Shannyn Sossamon will stop playing college girls when she turns 30 this year, but she stars as Beth, the blandest but least dead of the bunch, who hires detective Andrews (Edward Burns) to slowly and ineptly figure out what's going on.

Big question: "One Missed Call" is a remake of a Japanese adaptation of a novel, but isn't this still just "Final Destination" meets "The Ring"?

Skip it: Less evil than "Saw IV" but still a grade-D nuisance, "One Missed Call" features people who are startled by everything (including cats and library announcements) and deaths no more creative than hit-by-a-train and impaled-in-the-chest. The film's foreboding ringtone isn't as chillingly awful as, say, OneRepublic's "Apologize," and the hard candies that appear in all the victims' mouths indicate not a terrifying link among them but relief that they died with fresh breath.

Catch it: If you can tolerate a flagrantly senseless movie just by following the advice of one corpse-to-be (Johnny Lewis): "Don't try to think. It just makes you look ridiculous."

Bottom line: If you knew the last words you were going to say before you died, wouldn't you make an effort not to say them? The flick's characters don't seem to realize this, but fortunately you still can refrain from uttering a line as doomed as, "Hey, let's go see 'One Missed Call.'"

Bonus: Beth's friend Leann (Azura Skye) remarks that from now on, she's only going to parties where no one gets cremated. The policy doesn't do her much good, but that's still probably a decent rule to live by.

mpais@tribune.com

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