As a loyal reader of Rottentomatoes.com for all my “gauging a movie’s worth by assigning it a percentage” needs, I was shocked to discover that the newest installment of the phone-horror genre, “One Missed Call,” managed to achieve that perfect game of suckiness which even “Batman and Robin,” “Rollerball,” and “Master of Disguise” could not –
A COMPLETE AND UTTER 0% RATING.
If you’re not an avid follower of RT’s generously all-inclusive uber-reviews, then you may not fully appreciate the enormity of a 0%. This means that not one single critic in print or online media gave it a review that was even remotely positive; not one pathological movie apologist, not one indiscriminate horror fan who interviewed the director on his blog and felt obligated to give it a good review, and not person in any remote position of cinematic analysis who felt compelled to say “whatever, it was what it was.”
To put this in a more bludgeoning perspective, bear in mind that only one movie IN THE HISTORY OF MOVIES has managed a 0% rating with a significant number of reviews counted — the Antonio Banderas / Lucy Liu gem “Ballistic: Ecks vs Sever” scored a whopping 0-for-102.
Despite the overwhelming sh*t-gravity of a 0% rating for “One Missed Call,” I have no doubt that this legendary distinction is positively unjustified. Sure, the film looks like crap, but it certainly seems no more egregious than other half-assed horrors like “Fear Dot Com” and “Thirteen Ghosts,” neither of which laid a goose egg (the Shalhoub factor adds 10 percent).
The worst film I have ever seen is “Son of the Mask,” which does not by any conceivable stretch of even the most generous imaginations qualify as an actual movie, and yet — it has FIVE positive reviews. Five! Five presumed actual humans sat through “Son of the Mask” and came away saying “I rather enjoyed the thought bubbles coming out of that baby and Jamie Kennedy’s six lines of dialogue, and I am now going to admit this to people on my public avenue for movie-evaluating.” I’m sure “One Missed Call” is crappy, but there’s just no way it’s anywhere near being the worst movie of all time, or even in the discussion. LOOK AT THAT GOD DAMNED POSTER.
If anyone can find another 0% movie besides “Ecks vs Sever,” please let me know in the comments. Or just feel free to rip on “Son of the Mask” some more, that’d be fine too.
