Phone
Director: Ahn Byeong-ki
Year: 2002
Rating: 7.5
Country: Korea
Like all over
Asia, after the J-Horror phenomenon, horror films spewed out like goblins.
Everyone wants to hear screaming in their own language. Korea followed the
trend with films like Apt, Cello, Cinderella, Bunshinsaba, Arang, Ryeong,
The Doll Master, Red Eye, Red Shoes, Voice, the Whispering Corridor films
and the brilliant A Tale of Two Sisters. Things that you see out of the corner
of your eye. Things that whisper in your ear when you sleep. All of these
were well-produced - some very artistic and psychological, others that go
for the throat. Phone is among my favorite of these films. From literally
the opening frame, a sense of heavy dread lays over the film and manages
to stay that way through the entire running. This is a classic ghost narrative.
It never gets bloody or really horrific - it is a slow boil with something
always going on whether it be threats, phone calls, a reflection in the mirror,
long black hair coming out of the faucet, a piano playing the Moonlight Sonata,
a little girl kissing her father on the lips or just pressing the number
13 in an elevator. A lot is going on in this film - twists and turns and
terrifying revelations. Insanity where you least expect it.
In the opening scene, a clearly distraught
young woman gets on the elevator, presses for the thirteenth floor, the lights
begin to flicker, she gets a call on her cell phone and screams into it and
never steps out. This is just a preamble to the main story but connected
as we find out later. Thankfully, my condo goes from 12 to 12A to 14.
Ji-won (Ha Ji-won, Duelist, Sex is Zero, Tidal Wave and lots of romantic
comedies) has just finished an expose for her newspaper on prominent men
having underage sex. She is getting calls threatening her, emails doing the
same, being followed - so she decides to get a new phone number and her sister
and brother-in-law offer her the use of their house that is not being used.
She accepts. When she moves in, across the street she sees a young woman
playing Beethoven's piano sonata - thirteen minutes of beauty and despair.
Night after night.
And weird shit begins to happen. At the
museum with her sister and her sister's little girl Young-ju, her phone rings
and the girl answers it and screams. And begins acting in a creepy unexplainable
manner - loving the father (Choi Woo-jae) and giving the mother (Kim Yoo-mi)
looks that should have killed her on the spot. This little sweetie pie is
terrifying in this film. I am surprised that the parents of the actress were
willing to be alone with her after seeing the movie. I sure wouldn't. Ji-won
though is no marshmallow - she is a journalist with endless guts and begins
to investigate. It all started with that phone call.
But there is no record of it. Let's see
who had this number before me. And it turns into a gut punch of death and
revenge. On one level, we have seen all these scares in other films - technology
again being the vehicle of horror - just don't answer the damn phone - but
they are well-played out here. There was one very ragged cut when a man tries
to kill her and the phone rings - and like a fool he picks it up while trying
to kill her. This is directed by Ahn Byeong-ki who had directed Nightmare
with Ha JI-won and went on to direct a few other horror films - Bunshinsaba,
Apt and the producer of a number of horror anthologies.
