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Joyce's
boyfriend, Roman, recently died in a car accident
and his family is blaming her for their sons death.
What's even worse is that Roman was an incredibly
jealous boyfriend and will do whatever it takes to
stay with Joyce, even when he's dead. Soon enough,
Joyce starts receiving obscure text messages from
Roman and what she at first assumed was an evil prank,
soon turns into deadly reality.
In a desperate attempt to milk some final money out of
the ghost genre before it dies for good, the Philippine
company, Regal Films, produced this awfully generic
horror flick. Little effort seems to have been put
into the story and it doesn't attempt, even once, to
surprise its audience with something new and fresh.
When you're making rip-offs of rip-offs of rip-offs,
you know something's bound to go wrong.
Joyce is a beautiful girl (well, she's average) and
her boyfriend, Roman, has recently passed away. So
guess what? Roman decides to come back from the dead
through cell phones and kill anyone who speaks bad
of him - or Joyce (oh and the explanation as to why
he kills people through cell phones isn't just
ludicrous, but also very dull.) As you can see, TXT
doesn't offer anything new. I don't even know why
it was called TXT since Roman kills his victims by
calling them and then screaming in their ears (so
the story was based on a bad prank call?). I guess
it was because the title "One Missed Call" was taken.
The absolute worst part about the movie however, has
to be the fact that it's almost two hours long, and
in no way is the story good or entertaining enough to
keep the viewer interested for two hours. I can
imagine many people leaving the theatre after about
an hour into it. But it's not all bad. The acting is,
well, it's not good, but compared to other Filipino
movies that I've seen, it's above average. As is the
cinematography and directing. The movie actually
looks like it had a decent budget (something which
can't be said for other Pinoy movies I've seen) so
it's not impossible to sit through it.
I'm positive that TXT would have been a slightly
more pleasant experience had it been about 40 minutes
shorter, it wouldn't have made it any more original,
but it would have been passable. It's not scary in
any way, nor is it ever suspenseful. But at least it's
not shoot-yourself-in-the-head bad.
Some blood splatter, PG stuff.
Again, nothing original but above average for Pinoy
movie standards so I'll greet them for that.
Apart from a very morbid love declaration (involving
the words "I'll kill them all, one by one"), TXT offers
very few surprises. For Pinoy-standards, it looks
surprisingly good but unfortunately the story is way
too long and lacks originality. Unless you're Filipino
yourself, don't waste your time with this one.
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