For day two of Scary Movie Month 2020, I turned on the 2002 Korean horror film, Phone (폰). Starring Ji-Won Ha, Yu-mi Kim, and Woo-jae Choi, and directed by Byeong-ki Ahn, it’s the story of investigative journalist, Ji-won, a woman who broke open a sex scandal involving some very powerful people. After receiving constant death threats and is contacted by a stalker, she changes her number and moves to her friend’s empty house in another city. Soon afterward, she begins receiving mysteriously frightening phone calls. One day, her friend’s daughter, Young-su innocently answers the phone and lets out a blood-curdling scream. After that, something seems wrong with the child, and Ji-won begins to see a mysterious girl.
I first picked up [the] Phone (heh) around aught four or five when I really got into horror from Asia. I was basically picking up stuff left and right. Those Tartan Asian Extreme releases were my jimmy jam. It was pretty much a case of “Is this a horror film from Asia? Good! Imma gonna watch/buy it!” Is Phone a great name? Nope. Is it from Asia? Yep. Alright then.
I haven’t seen the movie in at least a decade (probably longer), so I was essentially going in blind. While there are a couple of memorable moments that stuck in my head, for the most part, I had forgotten the plot and story beats. I had thought about watching it last year, but with everything that was going on in October 2019, I never got around to it. Now it’s this year, and here we are.
I have very mixed thoughts about this film. While there were some exceptionally effective moments, I can’t deny the creaky bits.
Let me just say that I am somewhat impressed that the film doesn’t look like it was filmed on a miniDV camera. You think I’m joking? There is a certain… aesthetic to Asian horror of the early 2000’s. You come to get used it after a certain point, but you can definitely see it. What was really surprising was that the cinematography is incredibly competent with some effective camera movement, angles, obfuscation… it’s well done for the most part.
Even the jump scares are mostly effective, with a good use of timing and even musical cues. It’s not like modern obnoxious American horror, that’s for sure.
Most of the adult acting is competent enough. There’s some stilted line delivery, but for the most part I don’t really have any complaints, and even now, I can’t recall a specific scene in which an adult actor was downright terrible. The actress portraying the child Young-su was 👀 She displayed an insane range of emotions, and I have no idea how they got her to go from innocent to sinister… sometimes in the same scene! There’s one scene near the climax of the film that is just jaw droppingly frightening, and that’s entirely because of her acting chops. She does a lot to carry the film. Had she been less than, the movie wouldn’t have worked, and she just makes everything go. My goodness, is she one of the most expressive children I’ve ever seen in film.
The opening stinger is effective and sets the tone rather nicely, even if it may not be “original.” And that’s really the biggest thing about the film. It’s doesn’t really break any new ground, but you know what? You don’t have to always break new ground. A film can be entertaining or good on its own merits, and that describes Phone. It doesn’t really do anything super new, which was the case even when it came out, but what it does do is well put together.
The film actually does a rather effective job at connecting the sex scandal and the concepts to the rest of the film. It’s not just used as mere set-up to get Ji-won into into the scary situation… I mean, it does do that, but there’s more to it than that. Even after the situation with the stalker is resolved, they don’t drop the themes. It’s kind of impressive that they don’t just move on to something else as the scares get going and it plays heavily into the film.
Musically, I don’t remember anything sticking out. Ultimately, the music served the film, nothing more.
Although the story itself was fine, some of the pacing was a little rough at times with some scenes too heavy with exposition and some scenes leaning too heavily into flashback. The ending though… there are like 42 different twists and turns that I had completely forgotten about, so when the ending happened, I was all Whaaaaaaaaaaaaaa?!?!? Then when the credits rolled, I was like Really movie? That’s how you’re going to end? Really?!?
And that ending… there was basically no resolution to anything. There was a cheap “Is it really the end?????” sort of thing utilizing a painfully bad CG render of a flip phone, but everything was plugging along so nicely until then. The mind boggling thing was that it felt like Phone was essentially missing a couple of scenes to bring it all together and it kind of left me with an empty feeling more than any sort of frustration. It was rather strange.
Now we come to the end. What would you like me to take a look at? Make a suggestion, and I’ll my best to find it!
-Kevin
Featured image credit: http://www.imdb.com
And just an aside– it was kind of interesting watching the movie because now everything is so familiar. The subways, the streets, heck, even the elevator… I was thinking at the beginning that my building might have been featured in the film (it wasn’t) Things like the elevator panel looked just like the one at my place. It was kind of fun to go Wait! That looks so familiar!
Adventures in Korea 