What actually happens
Two days' notice, delivered by voicemail
At a mixer, Yoko Okazaki misses a call that plays a ringtone she does not recognize, and the caller ID shows her own number. Her friend Yumi Nakamura listens with her to the message, which is dated two days ahead. In it Yoko says it is starting to rain, and then someone screams. Two days on, Yumi's phone rings with Yoko calling, and Yoko is saying the same words, and Yoko is thrown off an overpass onto a moving train. Her severed hand is then shown dialing a number. Authorities decide it was suicide, but Yoko's schoolmates remember other deaths that came after voicemails. Then Kenji Kawai, who has just started dating Yoko, tells Yumi he has a message from himself, with a timestamp two minutes away. While Yumi watches, an unseen force drags Kenji down an elevator shaft. Kenji bleeds out at the bottom, a red jawbreaker rolls out of his mouth, and his phone dials another number on its own.
Reading this instead of watching it is the correct decision. Scaredy Cat makes that decision automatic, for free.
Television offers a free exorcism
Yumi asks her friend Natsumi Konishi to move in for a while and turns both of their phones off, which changes nothing. Natsumi still gets a call from her own number, and this time it brings a photo of herself with a shadowy figure standing behind her. The media picks up the story and offers Natsumi a live exorcism on TV, and over Yumi's protests she agrees. Yumi also meets a detective named Hiroshi Yamashita, who has been investigating the curse since it took his sister Ritsuko. He explains that the call to each new victim comes a minute after the last death, and that the victims turn up with red jawbreakers in their mouths. The trail leads to a hospital that has since changed its building and phone number. Yumi realizes the noise she heard right before Kenji's fall was an asthma inhaler, and the autopsy records point to Mimiko Mizunuma, a girl who died of an asthma attack and whose mother Marie then went missing. Ritsuko's journal says Mimiko's sister Nanako was hurt at the same moment every time Mimiko had an attack. They guess that Marie hurt her children to get attention.
The live broadcast nobody should have booked
This is the scene people dread most, so here is exactly what happens. After Yumi and Yamashita have traced the hospital records, they run into the TV studio during Natsumi's exorcism. An invisible force throws the exorcist backward, and Natsumi dies as her limbs are twisted at angles limbs do not go. A jawbreaker drops out of her mouth afterward, and a cursed voicemail arrives for Yumi. Yamashita takes Yumi home and urges her to stay with her family. She tells him that her mother abused her when she was a child, and the movie moves on to the sisters.
A text message with a one-minute deadline
Yamashita visits an orphanage and meets Nanako, a girl who will not speak but owns a teddy bear that plays the same tune as the ringtone on the victims' phones. Yumi goes to the abandoned hospital by herself and meets the spirit of Mimiko there. A text message tells her she will die in under a minute. Yamashita cannot reach her by phone, so he rushes to the hospital and finds an arm holding a cell phone, which he switches off. When the minute is over, he finds a crate with Marie's body in it. The body stirs, and Yumi sees her own mother, who abused her, in Marie. She tearfully hugs her and apologizes for leaving, and Marie's body slumps again.
The ending, explained
Yumi goes home, and Yamashita gets called back to the station, where a video tape from the Mizunumas' empty apartment shows who was abusing Nanako. It was Mimiko. Marie walked in on Mimiko cutting Nanako's arm with a knife, Mimiko collapsed with an asthma attack, and Marie took Nanako to the hospital and left Mimiko behind. Nanako finally speaks and tells Yamashita that Mimiko paid her in candy to stay silent. In Yumi's apartment, a clock runs backward toward the time of death in her voicemail, and Mimiko appears. Yamashita arrives and hugs Yumi, who seems fine, then he is stabbed and sees Yumi appear as Mimiko in the mirror. He dreams that he is helping the dying Mimiko use an inhaler, and then he wakes in a hospital bed with Yumi beside him. She is holding a knife behind her back. She gives him a kiss, slips a jawbreaker between his lips, and smiles, which suggests she has found a new Nanako.
The post-credits ruling
Nobody has confirmed whether there is a scene after the credits.
✓ Spoiled safelyDog status: fine, no dog dies.
Questions people ask at 1am
Is One Missed Call scary?
Yes, One Missed Call is a 5 out of 10. It is a slow countdown built on cursed voicemails, with jump scares and a few violent deaths, and the unease mostly goes away within a day or two.
How does One Missed Call end?
Mimiko appears in Yumi's apartment and Yamashita is stabbed. He wakes in a hospital, where Yumi gives him a kiss and a jawbreaker, which suggests she has picked a new Nanako.
Does the dog die in One Missed Call?
No dog dies in One Missed Call, and no cat dies in it either.
Is there a post-credits scene in One Missed Call?
Nobody has confirmed whether One Missed Call has a scene after the credits, so stay if you want to be sure.
Who is behind the calls in One Missed Call?
Mimiko Mizunuma, a girl who died of an asthma attack and who had been abusing her sister Nanako. In One Missed Call her spirit passes the curse along to each victim through a voicemail from their own number.
