'One Missed Call': When an Onryō Goes Digital
In a world where we hear ringers and beepers at every corner, technology feels inescapable. This is why technology is often an enemy in Digital J-horrors, like One Missed Call.

2008 year. Old friends Kostya and Zavgar come up with not quite legal schemes of earnings. Money comes easy and just as easy to leave. It seems that this success will be eternal. But each has its own trap, especially if you want even more money. Kostya starts a big game, which can cost him and Zavgar freedom, friendship and even life itself.
In a world where we hear ringers and beepers at every corner, technology feels inescapable. This is why technology is often an enemy in Digital J-horrors, like One Missed Call.
"WHAT ARE YOU WILLING TO SACRIFICE?!!!!" "EVERYTHING!!!!!" This is but one of a multitude of highly emphatic questions, and subsequent answers, being asked in the newest feature film from one of the current masters of horror, Jordan Peele ("Get Out", "Us" and "Nope"). I must give Peele credit in that he continues to push the boundaries of specific genres and their associated tropes in order to provide what ends up amounting to subtly then jarringly intense, yet still character and story-driven, cinema that speaks more to indie stylings than mainstream.
We can criticize depictions from old media, but they weren’t simply “good for their time”. They were fighting and struggling in a world we can’t imagine.
Two Distant Strangers (2020) centers around Carter James (Joey Bada$$) as he tries to get back home to his pitbull, Jeter, after spending a night at the apartment of his date Perri (Zaria Simone). What gets in the way of Carter reuniting with his dog is that every time he tries to leave Perri’s apartment, he is killed by police and wakes up back in her bed in a never-ending cycle. It addresses the issue of police brutality which rightly has been in the public eye more and more with the unjust deaths caused at the hands of law enforcement.
Every movement becomes a question of identity. To become who we are meant to be. In order to reach that we often have to shed who we once were, and that shedding can sometimes be so brutal it’s ungraceful.
This Netflix series is a remake based on the book series of the same name with a more diverse main cast.